The Hunt
by merlinmercury
Summary: Stiles wakes up with a hangover and the phone number of the most attractive (and the frowniest) guy he's ever encountered. ...Who also happens to be the front-man for the band Scott's just joined.


PART ONE

Stiles is _reasonably _drunk. He had four shots back at his and Scott's dorm room before heading out to the bar, and, well, thinking about it now he's pretty sure it was actually more than that. Then there'd been more rum and cokes and beers than he was willing to try and count up right now. After all, he's in a bar and counting is boring.

His friends are somewhere. Well, they're sort of his friends; he wants them to be. They're the people he was sitting with in his law tute that afternoon and they'd extended the invitation when they realised he was there, listening in on their Friday night plans. It had been pretty awkward, but Stiles is confident things will improve. Most things start off pretty awkwardly for him, so he's used to it.

He wanders down along the bar towards the dance floor, and he can feel himself grinning a little bit. It's just _awesome _to be out of his room for once, to stop poring over pieces of legislation he's pretty sure nobody without at least part of a law degree even knows exist, and let the alcohol and thudding music push it all out of focus for a while. It's also nice, like, _really _nice, not to be alone here. Which he won't be, as soon as he finds his new buddies again.

He makes it to the dance floor, and as soon as he enters the throng of moving bodies he finds himself pressed up against someone, their hands grabbing at his arms. Everyone around him is dancing, so he figures he should dance too. He's never been that good at dancing, but it's fun, so he flails along. The hands tighten their grip, and then they're pulling him away from the crowd, over into the corner. The hands on him are big, strong. The arms they're attached to match, and he looks up at the guy who is not altogether bad-looking just in time to have a pair of lips mashed against his own. It's kind of rough and a little sloppy, and he can't breathe all that well, but somebody's kissing him, so he's pretty okay with the situation as a whole.

After a while the guy pulls away, looks down at Stiles and says, "you wanna get out of here?"

Stiles nods, because it's getting really warm and loud and his mouth is dry and he's still trying to catch his breath, and finding some air sounds like as good an idea as any. The guy keeps one hand tight around Stiles' wrist and leads him towards the door.

They're nearly there when Stiles stumbles—trips over his own feet maybe, that happens—into some unfortunate person who's just bought themself a drink. A drink which is now all over their shirt, and all over Stiles.

"Hey, man, I'm so sorr—" he starts to say, but his speech functions cut out (and god is that _ever _a bad sign) when he sees the scowly face looking down at him. The scowly face of a dude who gives the impression of spending a maximum of three hours a day _outside_ a gym, and could probably kill Stiles with his knifelike cheekbones if he wanted to. Which he might well do, at this moment. Stiles' heart gives an odd, lurching twist, apparently attempting some sort of gymnastic feat it really shouldn't. He can't decide whether he wants to run away, or plaster himself against the guy's unbelievably perfect body. It's unfortunate that he can't do both at once; it's conundrums like this that make his life so hard.

"It's alright."

It takes Stiles a second to realise that scary-guy actually hasn't said _I'm going to kill you_, and in that second he's already being dragged away by kissing-guy, who's pulling quite hard on his wrist now, almost too hard, if you ask Stiles—which happens surprisingly rarely, actually. It usually comes down to Stiles' outstanding willingness to tell people what he thinks without them having to ask. Stiles throws a quick glance over his shoulder and sees scary-guy has turned to talk to someone at the bar. His back is every bit as nice as his front.

Then he's out in the chilly air of the street, and kissing-guy is still leading him by the arm, down the sidewalk and into an alley where it's dark and quiet. There are trash cans parked along either side, and a skip down the end.

"'s romantic," he jokes, but kissing-guy doesn't seem to hear him. Which is a shame. Stiles is funny, it's one of the few things he has going for him.

Suddenly, kissing-guy shoves his back up against the brick wall, hard enough to graze his spine and knock uncomfortably into his tailbone. _Ow, _Stiles tries to say, _that hurts, _but there are lips pressing against his again. It's even rougher than before, more like being shoved backwards by the mouth than actually being kissed, and his skull knocks into the bricks with a dull smack. The pained noise he makes is lost in the mess of tongue and teeth. He tries to wriggle away, but both his arms are pinned to the wall up beside his head, and, okay, no. It's all distinctly _not fun anymore_.

Stiles doesn't know what to do; his brain is too fuzzy and each train of thought he clumsily tries to board is shot through with panic and derailed. He feels ill. He's pretty sure he's going to throw up in a second, and he thinks that may actually be a reasonable plan of action.

That's when more rough hands start grabbing at him.

"Matt," a voice growls, and _shit_, Stiles thinks, he doesn't stand a chance against these people, whoever they are. How did he even get here? Where are his friends?

He's surprised when the first guy, who it seems may be called Matt, releases his arms and steps back. Stiles hauls in a long, deep breath which is a _lot _shakier than he'd have liked it to be. Not that he can bring himself to care right now.

"Derek," Matt spits at the newcomer. "What the hell do you want?"

"I want you to get _out of here_," the growling voice somehow becomes even lower and more threatening, and Stiles is thankful for the absence of Matt's hands all over him, but the menace in those words makes him wish he could hold himself steady enough to bolt before either of the two guys turn their attention back to him.

Stiles sneaks a look at the guy who's got Matt-the-creep backing away from him.

Oh, crap.

Angry eyes are looking right at Stiles, and he's fairly certain this is how he's going to die. In some dodgy alley, turned to pulp by the fists of the incredibly intimidating, incredibly _hot_ scary guy who he'd run into on his way out of the bar. Of course he'd pick the attractive serial killer to spill beer all over. That would be exactly Stiles' luck.

"Whatever," Matt is saying, as he paces back towards the street, "keep the lost little first year, if you want him so much."

As soon as Matt's out of sight, the hot scary guy—Derek, Stiles is pretty sure Matt called him Derek—closes the distance between them and... doesn't punch him, or strangle him, or do anything even vaguely murderous. What he does is put an arm around Stiles' shoulders. It's pretty helpful because Stiles' legs aren't completely working anymore.

"Are you okay?" Derek asks. His voice isn't as growly anymore.

"Fine," Stiles nods. "Please don't kill me," he adds, because it's worth a try, isn't it?

Derek frowns. Even more than he had previous been frowning, that is, which was already quite a lot of frowning. Derek's frowning is very intense.

"I'm not here to hurt you," he murmurs between frowns.

"Oh... okay. That's good," says Stiles. "That's kind of a huge relief actually, because of how I spilled my drink on you earlier, and then there was that guy, and then you—and I thought—"

"Stop talking," Derek interrupts, and starts helping—which basically involves dragging—Stiles out of the alleyway. Stiles stops talking and slips a sneaky arm around Derek's waist. He silently congratulates himself on being so smooth.

His stomach takes the opportunity to empty itself out all over the pavement.

Derek sets him down on a bench outside the bar.

"Wait _right here_," he says, and that's a really serious face he has on.

"Ooookay," Stiles agrees. He doesn't have an awful lot to lose anyway, since his legs are now something in between actual legs and jello, and sitting feels really nice. The world continues spinning around him.

Derek disappears, but he's back almost instantly, brandishing a bottle of water.

"Drink," he grunts, because he's clearly such a man of words.

"That was fast," Stiles commends him, and takes the bottle. "Water's boring," he says, but drinks anyway, and it's a lot less boring than he expects it to be. It turns out he's actually very thirsty.

Derek also seems not to be as scary as Stiles had thought. He's being really nice, and not that many people are_ really_ nice to Stiles. Certainly not without him asking, maybe even begging them to be.

Derek also remains every bit as attractive as Stiles had first decided. He should really thank him for this.

"You're like, really attractive," Stiles tells Derek. "And nice. You're nice."

Derek just looks at him, raises one of his manly caterpillar eyebrows and tells Stiles to finish his water.

Stiles thinks maybe he wasn't clear enough.

"You're like, Greek-sculpture good-looking. You probably look like, like," Stiles thinks back to his high school art history classes as best he can, and jumps when a name comes to mind, "Laocoön! You probably look like Laocoön under those clothes. Only with a bigger cock."

Both Derek's eyebrows are raised now.

"Because you know how they used to make all the statues have small cocks," he clarifies, but it doesn't seem to help much.

"You shouldn't drink so much," he says, and that's the lamest answer to anything Stiles has ever heard.

"On the contrary," Stiles protests. "Law student," he motions toward himself. "I need to drink absolutely all the alcohol I can find. What do you study? Or do. I don't know if you're a student or what, really I don't know you at all—"

"Music," Derek butts in, and it's still a one word answer, but at least there _is _a word in it. Stiles is better with words than silent eyebrow gestures.

"Huh. Music, that's super cool. My best buddy's majoring in music, maybe you two will see each other around the place."

Derek shrugs noncommittally.

"Anyway. I totally thought doing law would be an awesome idea, and it's not like it's that bad, except for when it totally is, which is totally often. My Dad's a sheriff and I love researching cases and stuff, but so much of it is reading textbooks that should be banned for being too long and boring, and statutes that are even worse. And law students drink like, more than any other students I've ever met. And I had friends. I was here with friends."

"What are their names?" Derek asks. And that's like, _four _words. Stiles thinks he should keep score.

Uh. What are their names again?

"Andrew," he guesses, "Lucy, Tim, and Joshua. My name's Stiles, by the way."

"These friends have any last names?"

"Uh."

Yeah, Stiles supposes he could be better organised, here. It's not his fault he lost them in the crowd.

"How did you get here?" Derek asks, because Derek has logic.

"Andrew drove," Stiles replies, and thinks back to where they'd left the car—a shiny, dark blue thing that _way _outshone his own Jeep. They'd parked just around the corner. "Parked in there," Stiles gestures awkwardly to a side street about a hundred metres up ahead. "Blue car. Shiny one."

Derek walks off in that direction, very purposefully, and Stiles watches him go. If he pays special attention to the way the swinging of Derek's arms makes the muscles in his back and shoulders ripple, visibly even through his shirt, then it's only because it would be wasteful not to make the most of that opportunity.

Derek's back quickly, shaking his head solemnly and sitting beside Stiles on the bench.

"No blue cars there. Do you have a number for any of these friends of yours?"

No, of course Stiles doesn't.

He'd been having such a good night like, fifteen minutes ago, and now he feels like just as much of a failure as he would have if he'd just stayed home and watched the Star Wars movies for the nine hundred and ninetieth time. Only, if he'd just done that, he wouldn't be stranded here, tired and, yeah okay, a bit too drunk to fully look out for himself.

He sighs.

"Stiles," Derek says, more softly, and Stiles starts because the guy knows his name, and oh, yeah, he did tell him earlier, but that still means he actually _listened _to Stiles' rambling.

"Yeah?" he says, a little squeakily.

"What were you doing with that guy earlier?"

"You mean Mark?" Stiles asks, because to be honest he's been trying to forget about that. Just like he's been trying to forget about pretty much everything lately.

"Matt," Derek corrects him. "I take it you don't know him well."

"Nope, not at all," Stiles answers. "He just—" he gestures with his hands in a way that's supposed to indicate the grabbing and dancing and dragging process by which he found himself outside with creepy kissing guy.

Now it's Derek sighing. "You know, you don't have to go along with it when assholes like that approach you."

"Well gee, when did you become my Dad?" Stiles finds that his voice sounds a little bit angry, and discovers that he in fact feels a little bit angry too. "And in case you hadn't noticed, not all of us are Greek statues. I kinda have to take what I can get."

Now Derek's looking at him with something like pity in his ridiculously pretty eyes. Good work Stiles, make all the hot guys pity you even more than they automatically did to begin with.

"Don't talk like that," Derek says.

Part of Stiles is faintly gratified by the hint protectiveness in those words, but mostly he's still annoyed, because it's not like Derek has ever had to deal with the problem of being perpetually gangly and awkward and lacking in nice things like huge pectoral muscles and dark shadowy stubble that makes people want to rub their faces against his.

"Don't tell me how to talk," he snaps in return.

Derek is silent for a long moment, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a cell phone.

"I'm going to call you a cab, okay? And you're going to message me when you get home safely. Put your number in here," Derek instructs, and holds the phone out to Stiles.

It takes him a full minute, but Stiles gets his number typed out eventually. His fingers are clumsy and his eyes are blurry, and the combination of the two makes him groan in frustration.

"You just secretly want my number," he says, trying to lighten the mood.

Derek lets out a soft sound that might almost be a chuckle, and Stiles takes it as a victory.

A few minutes later he's in a taxi, telling the driver whereabouts his dorm is. At first, the driver had looked out Stiles a little doubtfully, but Derek had handed him something—money, presumably, and enough of it to allay his concerns. Great, now Stiles is going to have to pay him back—he'd just... not eat this week, or something. His stomach lurches in agreement at that thought.

"Remember what I said about messaging me when you're home," Derek had said, and then helped him into the back seat of the car.

"Gotta tell you if I'm still alive," Stiles had confirmed.

"_That _you're still alive."

"Right. That."

Stiles knows the ride home isn't particularly long, but it seems to pass even more quickly than usual, in a blur of streetlights and the vague thudding of a club or party nearby, all the blurriness thickening his thoughts and making him kind of sleepy.

He may have nodded off just a little bit, because when he opens his eyes the cab driver has a hand to his shoulder, nudging him.

"Mmsorry," he murmurs, and feels around for his phone on the seat beside him before climbing—okay, tumbling—out the side door.

Stiles finds his way back to his room and crashes hard and fast in a way that would have made his hyperactive sixteen-year-old self very jealous indeed.

He wakes to a parched mouth and throbbing head that would have made precisely _nobody at all _jealous.

His cell blinks expectantly at him, and he rubs his eyes and checks it, squinting to focus on the words and pictures against their backdrop of bright artificial light. He has two new text messages.

They're both from someone named Derek.

...Oh. _Derek._

_Home yet?_ says the first.

_Stiles_, the second says simply.

_Sorry_, he types out hurriedly, _fell asleep. Still kicking_, and presses send.

He realises about five seconds later that it's a quarter past six in the morning.

His stomach turns itself over, over again, then inside out, back the right way, then finally wrings itself out like a sponge into the bin by his bedside.

He groans and curls in on himself under the covers.

His phone buzzes.

_Good_, the newest message says.

Stiles is pretty sure he's dying. His organs are melting inside his body, his brain is going to swell up in his skull and he's going to throw up absolutely everything until it's bones that are coming out, bones drier than the absolute fucking desert that is his tongue right now.

_Officially retracting that statement about still being alive_, he writes in response. _Sorry if I woke you, btw._

He remembers Derek, mostly, he thinks, and he remembers being a little bit scared of him really, but he also remembers that the guy saved his ass—and shit, his whole crappy night could really have gone _so much worse_. Besides, if he's dying he might as well do it with someone to talk to.

His phone beeps again a minute later. _It's fine. Enjoy the hangover_. Stiles can practically see Derek's face, some combination of frowny and smug, but it still makes him feel a bit better.

_Asshole_, he replies, because, truth.

_Idiot_, he receives in return, and despite himself, manages to crack a smile.

"Are you even paying attention, Derek?" Erica mutters through her teeth and elbows him in the ribs.

No, Derek isn't paying attention.

"Yeah," he answers irritably, and goes back to not paying attention.

He likes making music, playing in a band, but the audition process wears on his nerves more every year he endures it. Erica's only been through one set of auditions before, _and _it's thanks to her insistence that they need another guitarist that they're even running any auditions this year.

"Who are you texting?" Erica elbows him again, this time sounding more curious. Curious in that scary, tell-me-what's-going-on-or-claws-will-come-out way that girls are so good at, and which Derek doesn't like one bit.

"No-one."

"Derek, I know what texting no-one looks like, and you don't actually need your phone out to do it. So whoever's had you jabbing at that keypad every thirty seconds for the past five minutes isn't no-one."

Derek glares at Erica. She laughs in his face. He sighs and puts his phone away.

"Next," Boyd shouts and some dark-haired kid with a dopey smile wanders into the room.

"Hello there," Erica says, running her eyes up and down him, slides her tongue deliberately over her dark lipstick. "What's your name?" She sounds like she wants to eat him. Derek would be lying if he said he'd never wondered whether Erica's spaghetti and meatballs might be the Hannibal Lecter recipe.

"Scott McCall, majoring in Contemporary Music," the kid introduces himself and picks nervously at the strings of his guitar.

"Okay, show us what you've got," waves a hand at him. He feels his cell buzz in his pocket and is suddenly itching to touch it.

Scott strums through some sort of ballad, and Derek notes that his technique isn't half bad. The chords he plays are enthusiastic, nicely dissonant at times, and the rhythms are undeniably catchy. The lyrics sound like they've been torn from a twelve-year-old girl's diary, but Derek can hear that there's genuine, raw feeling in them, no pretentiousness.

"Did you write that?" Boyd asks when Scott's done playing.

The kid nods, a little shyly.

Erica and Boyd are both throwing him a look now—the same look, the one that says, _can we keep it, we'll feed it and clean its cage and everything_.

Derek feels his phone vibrating again, and realises that it works best for him to just say yes, right now. Scott's not a bad player, he's a decent writer—of music, at least—the others like him, and Derek wants to get out of here as soon as possible.

"How'd you like to join the pack, kid?" he asks, and Scott grins like he's three years old and Derek just handed him a huge lollipop.

"Thanks, man," he says, the words tumbling over one another in his excitement. "I won't disappoint you, I swear!"

"Good," Derek mumbles. "I'm going to get a coffee."

He doesn't get coffee.

He sits under a tree in the courtyard, opens up his thesis work on his laptop, and then proceeds to check his phone for a solid hour.

_Still in bed_, Stiles' latest message says. It's half past three in the afternoon.

Get out and breathe some air, he suggests. It'll make you feel better.

_But, dead_, Stiles replies. Derek chuckles.

"So, are you going to tell me who you're so busy texting yet?" Erica materialises behind him and Derek flinches. Violently. He turns around to see her pouting. "You know I'm not buying the whole _oh it's nobody_ thing, and I heard you laughing just now. Mr. Hale, if I didn't know any better I'd say you had some sort of crush."

"Well, I'm glad you know better, _Miss Reyes_."

"Alright, fine," Erica dumps herself onto the grass beside him, smoothing down her virtually-nonexistent leather miniskirt to ensure it keeps covering the desires two inches of her legs. "I'm gonna drop it, for now, because I'm nicer than you deserve."

Derek keeps his sigh of relief as inaudible as he can.

"So," Erica ploughs right on into the next topic for discussion, "McCall. You like the kid, or you just hate running auditions?"

"Both."

"Ahuh. Well, that's good; I invited him to practice with us this afternoon over at our place. We need to talk set lists for the Hunt sooner rather than later."

Derek would struggle to be much less excited about the Hunt—the Hunt being the University battle-of-the-bands competition that has, for the past decade, completely devolved into a faceoff between the Hales and the Argents. It began with Peter's band, Peter and the Wolves (his uncle had taken a pretentious type of pride in the Prokofiev reference) and Kate Argent's group—dubbed The Silver Bullets wholly in retaliation. From what Derek's heard, Kate's niece Allison is taking over vocals for the band this year. There are whispers of a name change in the wind, too. He'd renamed his own band Derek and the Werewolves, after Peter bought himself a one way ticket to Australia and was never heard from again. At first, his inherited gig as front man had felt exciting—like a clean slate, and an opportunity to try directing the focus back toward the actual music-making—but mostly, now halfway through his Master's degree, he feels like he's babysitting a bunch of undergrad drama queens and often catches himself wondering how his uncle is finding things down under. Australia is a big place. They could share.

"I'll be home at four thirty," Derek informs Erica, then gets up and leaves. Mercifully, she doesn't follow.

Derek can't decide whether he needs a coffee or a beer more. Or, you know, a bullet wound to the temple. When he sees McCall sitting cross-legged with his sneakers on the couch, eating potato chips and strumming his acoustic guitar—his,_ Derek's _acoustic guitar—it becomes abundantly clear that all of the above is the way to go. He begins with beer.

"Where's you get that?" he asks Scott gruffly. The kid looks up, face covered in such fright Derek has to fight the urge to double over laughing. Instead, he schools his features into the scowl which, somewhere along the line, became his go-to facial expression.

"E-Erica said I could—"

And sure enough, at the sound of her name, the devil herself does appear. Erica lounges in the doorway like she knows exactly what she's done and is just _daring_ Derek to do something about it. Derek can't remember why he ever agreed to having her as a housemate.

"Well, we're going to start practice now, so you can put that guitar down," Derek cuts in, throwing Erica a look that he hopes communicates _I'm going to rip your throat out with my teeth._

In return, he receives one which conveys something along the lines of _ooh, kinky. _

He hates her so much.

When he's not smearing salt and grease all over Derek's belongings, Derek can objectively appreciate that Scott's good at guitar. He and Erica immediately fit well together, with Scott taking the rhythm part while Erica plays lead. He comes across as dopey and immature and kind of clumsy, but that all evaporates the second his fingers are on the strings; then, he's confident, perfectly in time—the transformation is so profound that Derek finds it oddly mesmerising. He's still an annoying kid, but Derek has to concede that there's slightly more to Scott McCall than his first impression suggested.

Isaac starts them off, throwing together some chords on keys, and Boyd knocks out a heavy rhythm on the drum kit. Derek narrows his focus to the notes, the beat, the pressing and dragging of his fingers along the thick strings of his bass. The sounds wrap him up like they're all that matters, infiltrating his heartbeat, his breaths, the tension of his every muscle. It like running, a sort of euphoric breathlessness, as the music pushes forward and Derek keeps up, drawing growling vocals up from the deepest parts of his lungs.

Before Kate, the escape that music offered had been a favourite hobby. Since then it had become more of a necessity.

"Well, that didn't suck," Erica exclaims when their jamming breaks off.

"It was _awesome_," shouts Scott, all puppyish enthusiasm.

Derek is surprisingly inclined to agree.

One problem Derek's aware of, however, is that with both Peter and Laura gone the band needs to work on their lyrics. Derek's never been great with words, and neither has Boyd; Isaac isn't bad but he lacks the confidence to put anything particularly honest out there for public consumption; Erica's songs are of such sexual intensity that they really shouldn't be played back to back. And Scott's, it seems, are all about the different virtues of some girl he's hopelessly in love with—there's a whole one devoted to her eyes, another about her smile. Derek's pretty sure there was even one about her ears. So yeah, words are going to be an issue for them.

"We get three songs as our set," he explains, mostly for Scott's sake; he knows the others have all at least been to the Hunt before. "That's three songs to show the crowd and the judges what we can do. We want to go in with something big and heavy, something that grabs people by their collars and makes them pay attention. Then, we could do something softer—Scott, you and Isaac should work on some of the ballads you've already written. Then we finish with something loud but a bit more melodic, and hope it sticks in the judges' heads when voting time comes."

The band members are nodding as he speaks; Scott in particular looks like Christmas has come early. Derek doesn't want to imagine what he must be like when it's _actually Christmas. _

"I don't want to do any covers this year." Once, when Peter was in charge, they'd played a hardcore rendition of _Thriller_—which the audience had enjoyed, but the judges hadn't been as impressed. "We need to impress them with three new, original songs if we want to win."

What hangs, unspoken, between them (everyone but Scott, who's happily oblivious) is that this year, winning isn't just something the band wants, but something they need. The prize, as usual, is enough money to record a solid EP, and if the band and its relatively new members are going to make it, they need to be putting out tracks. Previously they've been able to afford it on their own, but after the fire their collective savings had been spent on replacing instruments and other basic equipment. They missed the competition altogether last year, too preoccupied with Kate's trial and repairing the house to have written or rehearsed anything of significance.

Derek tries not to think about it—any of it; Kate and the trust he placed in her just long enough to have his house half-destroyed, his sister killed. Kate, laughing and tossing her sandy curls in his face; Kate laughing at the jury and saying _I only meant to burn the gear, but Laura always was a bitch. _

Usually, people's assumptions that Derek is a rough or violent person, even a criminal, are laughably far from the truth—but when he thinks about Kate Argent sitting in a prison cell, all he feels is anger that she still has a windpipe.

And then, of course, there's the suffocating guilt—so Derek tries not to think about it when he's out, especially when he's with the band, who rely on him. He saves it for when he's alone. Right now he needs his front-man face on, so he distracts himself by checking his phone. There's another message there from Stiles:

_Feel utterly betrayed. Thought leftover pizza was my friend! Blergh. _

It's stupid—really, Stiles is just some drunk undergrad he helped home from a bar last night—but he finds it all too easy to picture Stiles, shovelling slices of congealed cheesy muck into his mouth, then instantly regretting it as he turns slightly green. Before he knows it all thoughts of Kate have been pushed to one side.

In an attempt to appease his stomach, Stiles resorts to eating dry white toast. He piles it onto a plate, which he rests on his bedcovers beside him while he watches movies on his laptop. He watches _The Blues Brothers_, because his current diet is all very Elwood, and also because it never hurts to see Carrie Fisher being badass. Ever. Elwood Blues is also possibly the one person Stiles has ever seen dance every bit as awkwardly as himself, and his car chases are the sort of epic that makes James Bond weep.

He sings—weakly—along with Aretha Franklin and feels a tiny bit better about life with each crazy note she belts out. At some point he gains a pair of sunglasses because there's bright, painful light glaring through the gap between the window frame and what's covered by the blinds, and he _could _get out of bed and walk across the room, but Scott's aviators are right there on the table beside his bed. So. It's (mostly) dark, and he's wearing sunglasses.

Stiles knocks the remainder of his bread everywhere when Ray Charles hits the piano, because you can't not shake it just a little bit to that song, right? He's kind of a mess, but he'll fix it all later, when the movie's over and he fancies moving.

This is the point at which Scott walks in.

"Dude," says Scott, "you know how I tried out for that band today?"

"Yes," Stiles answers, because yes, he does know that Scott was planning on trying out for a band today. "And thanks for your concern, by the way," he adds, because he may be a little bit crazy, but Scott should know the difference between Stiles' normal crazy and recovering-from-truly-terrible-decisionmaking-expe riences crazy.

"Oh," Scott actually looks puzzled for a second, and Stiles watches him do his double-take. "Are you okay?" he asks.

"No Scott, I am not okay, I am _dying_," Stiles snaps, because it's required; Scott is a terrible best friend and Stiles needs to puppy-train him better. It's a constant struggle. Stiles is also really, really keen to hear what Scott could possibly have to say about his music audition that isn't _I don't want to talk about it,_ though,so he lets Scott's negligence slide. "You were about to tell me about your band thing?" he prompts.

"Right, yeah. Well, I went and played that song I wrote about Allison—"

"That could be _literally _any one of at least thirty songs," Stiles interrupts.

"The acoustic one."

"Right." As though that makes it any clearer.

"Anyway, I got in! And then they invited me to go practise with them, and they said they want to work up one of my songs to perform at the Hunt! One of _my songs_!"

"That's awesome!" Stiles shouts, because Scott was sort of shouting by the end of his explanation, and they're shouting now, that's what they're doing. It's exciting stuff; Scott's been whining about not having a band to play with ever since he first picked up a second-hand red and white Fender strat at a garage sale in their freshman year of high school. "Come over here so I can give you a congratulatory man-hug—ow, be gentle—alright. So what are these band guys like?"

Scott shrugs. "They're pretty cool I guess? Isaac's really nice; he plays piano, does a lot of classical stuff. He's an accompanist for my performance class this semester, and was the one who suggested I try out. Erica's really... _really _outgoing, and she's _awesome _at guitar, and I didn't really get to talk to the drummer but he seemed nice enough too. It's just the front-man, really, that I'm not so sure about. He seemed kind of angry the whole time, and he glared at me a lot... I don't think he likes me very much."

"I'm sure he's just an ass," Stiles says dismissively, and Scott smiles a little. "Either he'll warm to you pretty soon, or he's just the sort of guy that never warms to anybody. You got in, though, that's what matters! Even Mr. Angry can't deny your musical super-skills."

Scott grins. "So, you gonna budge over, or do I have to pile on top of you?"

Stiles wriggles to one side of the bed and lets Scott sit beside him to finish watching the movie.

Over the course of the day, Stiles' stomach slowly returns to a state which is accepting of important things like food and movement. He takes himself out for a walk in the hope that the fresh air will help, and because he's only exacerbating his feelings of crappiness by staying cooped up in a room that smells of his and Scott's unwashed clothes, thinking about how he feels sick. It's late afternoon by then, and the sun's a little less obnoxious on the eyes. There's a slight chill in the air, just enough to make the air feel crisp and clean against his skin.

Stiles likes walking; it gets some of his energy out, gives him plenty of things to observe if he looks closely at his surroundings, and it helps him focus his thoughts a little—which, in the world of Stiles Stilinski, has always been a very valuable thing. He runs over the due dates for the next set of law essays. Counts up how much of his weekly budget he blew on drinks at the bar.

It occurs to him that he still has no idea how much he owes Derek for his cab fare home. Stiles doesn't like the feeling of being in anyone's debt—if he'd met Derek at the bar and then never heard from him again, he might have been able to forget about it, but he's been exchanging texts with him since he woke up half-dead at the crack of dawn, and that pushes his idea of Derek away from 'surreal memory of random stranger' towards 'actual person' in his mind. At the very least, he needs to find a way to give _some _of it back.

He texts: _Hey, I still owe you for the ride home last night. How much was it?_

_No you don't, _Derek replies._ Forget about it. _

Stiles isn't quite sure if it should be read as a kind dismissal, perhaps with the casual wave of a hand, or whether it's more on the curt side. Derek's been talking to him all day, but maybe he's finally decided he's had enough. It would make sense. Luckily for Stiles, he's had a lifetime's experience pushing right on through awkwardness in conversations. Derek's going to have to express his desire for Stiles to piss off more explicitly if that's what he wants to happen.

_I can't, I don't feel right about taking your money like that. I already owe you for saving my ass. I can post you an envelope or something, or do an online transfer?_

Stiles is so intently focused on navigating the conversation that he almost trips over a small dog. He ends up veering off the footpath and into the gutter in his efforts to avoid getting his legs tangled in its leash. He looks up from his phone's screen and realises how far he's walked without even paying any attention. He's almost back at his dorm already.

_It's not a big deal. You weren't planning on taking a taxi anyway. Do you even have a job?_

Stiles finds that last part kind of offensive—even if he is more or less completely broke, it's because he has living costs, and car-owning costs, and _textbook costs_, and combined those are really a lot of costs. He does have a job, though! It's not the most inspiring gig ever, but serving coffees to people beats serving burgers to people in a dumb hat, so, small mercies.

_I do, as a matter of fact_, he retorts.

_Really? Where?_

_Pat's Coffee Club._

_I know the place. Haven't been there in a couple years though. How about I drop by and borrow your staff discount on a cup. Sound fair?_

No, thinks Stiles, it doesn't sound fair _at all_ because what Derek's asking for is worth like, a dollar, when he spent maybe fifty times that on Stiles. He's not going to say no to the suggestion, though. Honestly he's surprised—okay, maybe even shocked—that Derek seems willing to see his face again. The exact words that left his mouth while he was drunk have been drifting back into clarity phrase by phrase all day and... well, Stiles couldn't blame the guy for running from that sort of thing.

_Sure, I have a shift from eight to two tomorrow if you're around then. _

_Okay_, is all he receives in return, but it's an important 'okay'; the sort of okay that's making his otherwise completely bleak outlook for the week to come seem almost exciting.

Stiles realises the moment Derek sets foot in Pat's Coffee that his mental picture of the guy failed to do him justice—the consequence being that he's taken completely off-guard by Derek's attractiveness all over again. Beer goggles clearly had absolutely no hand in his first impression of Derek, because there is literally nothing there for them to improve.

"You're staring," Lydia mutters into Stiles' ear, jabbing him in the back with an elbow, all the while sending a saccharine smile in Derek's direction.

"I'm not," Stiles protests. He totally is, though.

"Don't worry, I don't blame you," Lydia says lightly, like the comment's not laced with every suggestive meaning possible.

It's taken Stiles a long time to get used to the fact that Lydia even works here, in some random coffee place on the far side of campus. He still has trouble coming to terms with it pretty much every time he comes in for a shift they share. It's much less difficult to comprehend when he considers that the cafe's located right next to the Med building; Lydia writes her number on the cup of every vaguely attractive, sufficiently well-spoken doctor-to-be, that works for her. Stiles is glad that she's moving up from douchebag lacrosse players. Lydia also doesn't play down the fact that she's a genius the way she used to, and Stiles can't help but grin whenever he hears her flirtatiously discussing chemistry or mathematics complex enough to absolutely shred his brain with her regular customers. She does also have a job at a boutique in town, though Stiles knows for a fact she spends more money there than she makes.

Derek reaches the counter before Stiles can tell Lydia she doesn't know what she's talking about.

"I've got this one," Stiles pushes past her. Lydia just gives him a knowing smile and flounces off to monitor the state of the kitchen. Or something. Stiles can't really think of much that needs doing in there; it's been a quiet day. Either way, he's left alone with Mr. Insanely Handsome.

"Hi," says Derek.

"Hi," Stiles says back. Then there's a pause, and they just sort of... look at each other. Stiles thinks maybe Derek's as surprised that he wanted to see Stiles again as Stiles himself. He worries about whether their... whatever this is, has become something that works in the world of written exchanges but flounders horribly face to face. It's a distinct possibility. "So. Coffee," he breaks into the silence.

"Yes."

"How do you have yours?"

"Long black, thanks," Derek says, and starts digging around in his pocket. His hand emerges with a thin black wallet.

"Oh, no no," Stiles waves his hands about as though the action could actually push the wallet back into Derek's jeans. "This one's on me, dude."

Derek looks like he's about to protest, so Stiles turns away from him, grabs a cup and starts on making the coffee.

"Do you have any sugar?" Stiles asks, and Derek shakes his head.

He takes a seat at a table in the back corner of the cafe, and takes out his laptop. He stays there for three hours, ordering two more coffees and a slice of lemon cheesecake—until Stiles' shift is over.

Stiles takes off his apron, ignores the look Lydia gives him, and heads over to Derek's table.

"What are you working on?" he asks, taking the seat opposite him.

"Music stuff," Derek mumbles, and well, that's vague.

"What, like, theory? Or composition?"

Stiles isn't just asking in that small-talk way, where you pretend to be listening but then find you've forgotten not long after the person's finished telling you. No, he's been standing behind the counter all afternoon stealing glances at Derek, who's been staring intensely, almost _vengefully_ at his computer screen, feeling the restlessness of desperate curiosity build up inside him. Stiles has always been much better at trying to find out about things he finds interesting or unusual than doing what's he's meant to be doing. Like that essay he wrote in his Econ exam one year about the history of the male circumcision. His Dad hadn't been too happy after that parent-teacher conference, but come _on_, fiscal policy had been such a drag.

"Composition." It takes Stiles a second to pull his brain out of its ramble and process what Derek's saying.

"Are you using one of those music-writing programs where you click to put notes on the stave and stuff?"

Derek shakes his head. He seems half present in the conversation and half stuck in the same computery reverie he's been in all day, working alone.

He responds after a minute. "No. Lyrics."

Stiles' curiosity is, if anything, even less satisfied now that he knows this. What does Derek write song lyrics about?

"Can I see them?" he blurts out before he can stop himself. Song lyrics are kind of personal; he's heard enough of Scott's to know. He's even written some of his own, though he can't actually sing or play an instrument to go with them.

Derek, to Stiles' surprise, flips the laptop around to face Stiles.

"I was hoping to get some feedback from you, actually. I didn't write these myself, but I'm trying to edit them," he explains.

"Why me?"

Derek shrugs, like he doesn't really know why he's asking Stiles either. "I just need feedback from someone; you're as good a someone as anyone."

It's probably supposed to be a non-answer, but Stiles can't help hearing it as Derek telling him he gives a shit. As good a someone as anyone? Stiles doesn't hear that description of himself very often, nor does he feel that way very often. Derek doesn't seem to be paying attention, though, to all those outward things that make Stiles less desirable than much of the population. If he wanted to pay attention to those things, Stiles is absolutely sure Derek and his perfectly chiselled face and broad shoulders wouldn't be sitting there, across from him, in the first place.

No. Stiles can't afford to go about thinking things like that, because then when he's proven wrong the disappointment will be that much sharper.

Stiles must have been quiet a moment too long while he was babbling mentally to himself, because now Derek's giving him a look.

"You don't have to," Derek says, and his hands start reaching out to take the laptop back.

Stiles catches the laptop before he can move it. "No," he says, "I'd love to help."

Derek finds himself sitting at a cafe table opposite Stiles, listening to Stiles rant about how the metaphors in one of Erica's songs are much too thin, and the wolf-pack idea does very little to veil what's basically a graphic depiction of an orgy. He should feel incredibly awkward, he knows, talking about this sort of thing with a boy he's only met twice, but Stiles doesn't seem bothered by it, and that manages to make Derek feel at ease.

Derek's been sitting in the same spot for almost five hours now, not counting a few bathroom breaks necessitated by the fact he'd kept downing coffee. Stiles had kept refusing to let him pay for his orders, so Derek had taken to jamming money in the tip jar instead.

He'd been worried that coming here would trigger memories; Kate had studied medicine—she was always boasting about her plans to go into cardiothoracic surgery. She'd approached him at a bar one night, all bedroom eyes and sultry voice, and they'd met up at Pat's for dates several times after she'd finished with the undergrad classes she helped tutor. She'd been a PhD student and Derek, still settling into his Masters programme, had looked up to her ambition and success in awe. He'd ignored what Peter and Laura told him about not trusting the Argents, because Kate always told him what they had together was more important than some stupid family rivalry. He paid all the cheques because she told him that was what he was supposed to do. He brought her home and she kissed him with an intensity he'd never experienced before, and he gave her a front door key because she asked him for one.

The memories did come, as he looked around and saw their regular table over by the front window, the familiar colour of the floor boards and tiles, the same paintings still hanging on the walls—but it was all muted, like a projection of crackling flames dancing up against a screen, never actually burning anything.

He knows what he and Kate had was never real, and the memories of it don't feel real either. Stiles—fumbling around at the coffee machine, smiling and shaking his head when Derek tries to pass him even as much as a dollar bill—is what's real.

He didn't mean to stay so long, but the gentle hustle and bustle of the coffee shop, the sound of Stiles' voice carrying over the chink of plates and gurgle of frothing milk, was just right to help him settle into his work.

"You know, I could try to help you write some lyrics," Stiles is suggesting. "I'm useless if you hand me an instrument, but I'm good with words. Words I can totally do."

Derek pushes a hand through his hair. "I've been trying to write for so long, but I never know what to write about."

"Well," Stiles says, "probably the easiest way to go is to think about what emotions you connect with the most. Try hooking into some anger or sadness or, I don't know, _love, happiness_, just anything that you think you could get a bit poetic trying to describe. Those intangible things have a way of lending themselves to song lyrics."

Those first two, anger and sadness, are spot on—but Derek's not game to deliberately uncover them for any purpose, lest they should leak out past his defences entirely and refuse to be pushed back into containment. As for the second two, love and happiness aren't things Derek ever sees himself writing about. He rests his face in his hands.

"Alright then, maybe you need to start with something more specific. One person, or place, or event. Try and think of something that you feel like you have something to say about, but that something is too big or confusing or scary to articulate, if that makes sense. The beauty of music is you only have to do half your talking with the words."

Derek knows exactly what Stiles means—knows precisely which person and place and event he has that weighs him with that sense of unfinished business, makes any and all words feel completely inadequate.

"I can't," he answers.

Stiles seems to take it as a lack of ideas, because he presses on.

"Come on, haven't you at least had a bad romantic experience, or something? Not that I think—not that you're at all likely to have had as many of those as me, because, I mean... yeah—but you could find an idea in there somewhere to build on?"

Derek finds that he wants to talk, _wants _to tell Stiles that he has so much more than enough experience in that area, more than he can possibly channel into any song. The urge to open up is also a feeling which sits beneath the surface, beyond the reach of words; he's never told anyone the full Kate story off his own bat before. He doesn't know where to start, where to find the end of the tangled string of thoughts that should be words and begin unravelling it.

Stiles is pretty sure that Derek _does_ have ideas, he just doesn't know how to talk about them. It's understandable that he feels self-conscious; not everyone is as great at spilling their every thought out through their mouth as Stiles is. He should offer something of his own to beat a bit of a path through the awkwardness.

"The first person I hooked up with disappeared before we even got to actually... I went to... and when I came back she was gone."

Derek's looking at him with what Stiles reads as an annoying sort of pity. Stiles realises that while his explanation sounded like the whole story with his own set of memories playing in his head, it doesn't come close to actually explaining what happened. There's no nice, easy way to do that.

"What I mean is, she died. It was her birthday party, she disappeared, nobody saw her again until her body was found. I was the last person who saw her." He gets it out without stumbling over any of the important words, but that's only thanks to the years between then and now. It still makes him ache; not just the thought of her kissing him and taking him by the hand, putting so much hope in his virginal teenage... heart, but every single memory he has of growing up with her, playing hide and seek while their moms chatted.

Derek's expression is more intense now. He just nods once, doesn't comment and most of all doesn't say sorry. Stiles just can't stand it when people do that; it doesn't make any sense that they should apologise, and it reminds him too much of his mom's funeral, the weeks surrounding her death.

"The last woman I slept with burned my house down," Derek says after a while.

And, wow, way to drop a freakin' bombshell. Stiles is glad Derek doesn't seem to be expecting an answer to that, because he does _not_ have one.

Derek looks away, then down, fidgets with his empty coffee cup, then brings his eyes back up to Stiles' and adds, more softly, "my sister was inside."

"Shit," Stiles breathes, because he can't help it. This is definitely the heaviest conversation he's ever had with anyone that isn't family, and Stiles gets the impression Derek doesn't often talk about these things either.

"My mom died when I was a kid," Stiles offers. "Cancer, long and slow. I know it's really not the same, but—"

"It's close enough," Derek stops him. His voice is still quiet, perhaps even a little weak, but Stiles' own isn't much stronger.

"Losing a loved one, a part of your family, it's a unique—unfathomable—type of pain. It's like this hollowness that starts at your core and then pushes out, and you can't bear it but you can't do anything about it either. It's too big to think about—too hard to put together everything that person was and the fact that they're gone, to comprehend both at the same time."

"You are good with words," Derek sighs. He looks so much tireder than he did five minutes ago.

"Thanks," Stiles smiles, but it's a little watery. "When my mom died I used to write about it sometimes—just jot down words or sentences that I thought of to express some small part of how I felt. Sometimes I tried to write them out like song lyrics, and imagined I could put music with them because they seemed fuller that way. They were terrible, of course—I was really young—but I do think it helped. You might find it cathartic."

Derek looks like he's about to say no, so Stiles butts in again.

"You've already told me about it, Derek—it's out there now. You're allowed to talk about it, and you _should _talk about it one way or another. The more you pin it down with words, the more you take control of it."

Derek fiddles with his coffee cup again for a long moment.

"I'll try," he says at last, and Stiles can't hold back his grin. So maybe he doesn't know Derek all that well, but he can feel how huge this is all the same. He doesn't think they're just random, mismatched acquaintances anymore; there's something here that's actually working.

Stiles can't lie; he goes home with a spring in his step. When he gets to their room, Scott, who is apparently feeling guilty about not noticing Stiles was deathly hung over the previous day, is clearly trying to make up for his lack of observance today, because he points it out.

"What's up with you?" he asks. "You seem weirdly... happy?"

"Oh, nothing," he sidesteps.

Scott gives him a look to say that's not going to cut it.

"Okay fine," Stiles pulls off his shoes and flings himself onto his bed. "I met this guy at the bar on Friday."

Scott scrambles to attention, and Stiles realises how what he just said sounded.

"No—no. It's not like _that_, he's just a nice dude, okay? We've been texting, and he came through Pat's this afternoon, we had a good talk."

Scott looks a little disappointed. "Just talking?" And there's the stupid puppy face that Stiles pretends he's worked up total immunity to over the years, but secretly still makes him want to spill his guts and give Scott's hair a bit of a ruffle.

He groans and gives in. "Well, okay, he's really hot too. But it's still not like that—he's like, astronomicallyout of my league. He has this perfect jaw line, and... I'm honestly surprised every time he talks to me, but we get along, you know. Underneath his ridiculously sexy exterior, he's just a nice guy. I think we're friends now."

Scott tries to raise a questioning eyebrow and it doesn't quite work.

Stiles' phone buzzes in his pocket.

"Is that him now?" Scott says eagerly.

"How would I know? I haven't checked it yet!"

It's not Derek. Quite the opposite, in fact—it's Lydia.

_Tell me everything_, she demands.

_About what? _Stiles replies, but he knows he's fooling nobody.

Stiles ends up at Lydia's the following afternoon, eating some sort of salad for and early dinner-slash-interrogation. Lydia's amazing at cooking, like she is at everything she does, but for all the creamy avocado and cherry tomatoes Stiles still can't help fantasising about the burger he plans to pick up on his way home. He spent half his high school life eating rabbit food for the sake of helping his dad stay healthy, but he's a young adult and he has needs—greasy, bacony, burgery needs. Oh, and fries. He definitely has fry-related needs as well.

"So," Lydia says with a terrifying smile, "what's his name?"

Stiles tries to capture a rocket leaf on his fork and fold it into his mouth without getting dressing everywhere. It's difficult.

Lydia just waits.

"Derek," Stiles confesses eventually.

Lydia looks pleased. "And where did you meet Derek?"

"At Jungle, on Friday night."

"You went to a gay bar without me having to drag you there?" Lydia's gone the full Cheshire cat now. "Stiles, have you finally worked out how to hit on men acceptably? Because, I have to hand it to you, that is a _stellar _first effort—"

Stiles hadn't even _known _Jungle was a gay bar when he'd following his not-really-friends in there. Although thinking about it now, it makes a lot of sense. Does that mean that Derek—?

"_No, _okay, I was heading outside with this other guy," Stiles has to suppress a violent shudder at the thought of Matt, "and I spilled my drink on Derek on the way past. The next thing I know, the dude I'm with is an all-out creeper and Derek's there saving my drunk ass."

Lydia jabs at pieces of haloumi and somehow manages to chew them while grinning unrepentantly at Stiles.

"This is even better than I'd imagined," she says, and Stiles thinks she's right on the brink of giggling. Please, god, spare him the giggling for tonight.

"Look, that's all that happened, okay? He put his number in my phone so that I could message him to say I got home in one piece. We've been talking since then, and he came to Pat's yesterday because I offered him free coffee in return for, you know, saving me and getting me home."

"Coffee? Stiles, I'm disappointed in you."

Stiles doesn't want to know what she's thinking, no he does not. He gives up trying to eat his lettuce in a dignified manner and just shoves it in.

"Hey can I borrow your phone quickly?" asks Lydia. Stiles doesn't trust her for a second, but before he can say no she's burrowing a hand into his pocket and pulling his cell out, victorious.

"No you can't," he whines, not that it matters now. "What are you doing?"

Lydia hits the keys at lightning speed, and pouts in a way that makes Stiles suspect she's checking her lip gloss in the screen's reflection at the same time. He doesn't know how any of her lip gloss is even still there given she's halfway through a meal, but these sorts of things are special girl-secrets Stiles doesn't expect ever to be let in on.

"There," she says after all of about three seconds, and hands him his phone back.

Stiles knows better than to underestimate the damage Lydia Martin can do in three seconds.

Sure enough, there's a new outgoing message to Derek:

_What are you doing tonight? Want to come over? I'm room 37 in the Williams building._

Stiles thinks Lydia knows his address for the express purpose of sending texts like this one, since she refuses to actually set foot inside his room. At best, she'll stand in the doorway and make a show of holding her nose.

It's not the worst possible outcome, but it still feels like a minor disaster; Stiles' plans for the rest of the evening involve multiple Star Wars films, fast food and what remains of the enormous bucket of sour worms he picked up for cheap at the store a few days ago—alone, since Scott's out for dinner and a movie with Allison.

"You are evil, you know that? _Evil_." Stiles glares at Lydia.

"I know," she says sweetly.

Derek's trying to wriggle his way out of a double date Erica's set up with herself and Boyd, and some guy named Paul she's found who's _a good match for you, Der_, _just give him a chance_, when he gets Stiles' message. Even if he hadn't just handed in a research paper and wasn't running on an hour's sleep, a double date with Erica is still the last thing Derek would feel like.

_What are you doing tonight? Want to come over? I'm room 37 in the Williams building. _

He blinks at the words, which have appeared just in time to save him from an evening of watching Erica and Boyd suck face across a restaurant table, and then probably return home with Derek's own supposed date in tow, leaving Derek sexiled from his own house. _His own house. _It wouldn't be the first time. It wouldn't even be the second. He loves Erica, he does, but sometimes it's downright impossible to conceive of why.

"I can't go, I have other plans," he tells her.

"What?" Erica looks surprised—which is probably fair enough given that the number of social outings Derek has voluntarily attended in the past twelve months is equal to roughly zero.

Unless he's counting his trip to see Stiles yesterday—

—which he isn't, because he's still not entirely sure what that was, or where on earth the idea sprang from.

"I have other plans," he repeats himself deliberately, word by word.

"Going to bed at eight o'clock does not qualify as plans, Derek."

"Well, if that's the case, I _still _have plans."

"You're going to have to prove it if you want me to believe you."

Derek shows her the text, because he's been here a hundred times before and he knows the questions aren't going to stop.

He doesn't even want to think about the ideas hatching behind the devious smirk that spreads across Erica's face.

"So your mystery boy's name is Stiles, then! I guess I can excuse you from tonight's outing if _that's _what you'll be up to," she winks, and Derek rolls his eyes. "I have to go put on my lipstick now," Erica continues, "but if you think you can escape discussing this later you're _sorely_ mistaken."

"Have fun," Derek says, and turns away from her.

He's almost out the door, just shrugging on his jacket and grabbing his keys, when he hears her call out, "use protection!"

Derek sits in his car for a while, thoroughly enjoying the lack of probing conversation. He hasn't actually confirmed that he'll be visiting Stiles yet, but he figures if he's only expected there in an hour or two he can burn some time replenishing his body's caffeine reserves.

_Sure. When do you want me? _he types out, and almost presses send before he realises that the wording sounds a little... suggestive. Which, in turn, leads him to the realisation that he probably wouldn't care about a bit of vaguely suggestive wording if some part of him didn't secretly mean it that way.

_Sure. When should I come by? _he writes instead.

_Any time! You can start heading over now if you want, I'm out but I'll be back in five._

Derek is familiar with the Williams building; as an undergrad he had a few friends who lived there, and he passes it each day as he heads through the campus.

On his way he thinks about that thing he might have realised while he was working out how best to phrase his last message to Stiles. It surprises him, more than anything—he'd been through enough uncomfortable flirtations (largely of Erica's design) since Kate to begin believing he'd just never feel that way about anyone again. It always seemed too scary after coming home to find his house half-collapsed and charred black, and Laura, gone. Maybe he's just too tired to be thinking straight, but Derek doesn't think he's scared right now—not of this, not of Stiles, who has already proven himself to be the opposite of everything Kate was.

His main concern is that they're still just getting this thing off the ground, whatever it is—a friendship, at least; he hopes he can be sure of that much—and while Stiles had seemed to find him attractive when they first met, Derek can neither rely on drunken comments nor pretend that physical attraction is anywhere near enough. Nothing is casual for him anymore—on bad days, trusting another person enough even to let them buy him a drink is a struggle, brings back flashes of Kate.

It's only been about two minutes since Stiles' reply when Derek pulls up out the front of Williams, so he puts on some music and waits awhile. He decides he'll wait to try and figure out what Stiles wants from him, too—and Derek thinks that whatever that is will be okay.

Stiles catches every single red light on the way home from Lydia's. At every single pedestrian crossing, at least three people are dawdling past like they've nowhere to be any time in the next year or so. The five minute drive takes him more like ten minutes. He doesn't see Derek loitering anywhere outside when he arrives, though, so that's lucky. There's a black Camaro parked across the road though, and Stiles' mouth waters just a tiny bit as he takes in its smooth lines, dark-tinted windows and glossy sheen. In comparison his piece-of-crap Jeep—which he loves to death, but still—stands behind him like the embodiment of all his own awkwardness. Stiles decides he has time to go and have a sneaky perv on the Camaro before Derek arrives.

He's almost there when the driver's door opens and someone—whoever the car belongs to—starts to climb out. Stiles opts for the I-was-just-strolling-past-on-the-sidewalk approach.

Until he sees who it is that's in the Camaro.

"Oh my god!" Stiles starts. There may be a little too much flailing of limbs to consider his response to the situation entirely cool. He doesn't think anyone could really blame him, though, because that's _Derek _right there, standing there casually like he and his sleek sex machine of a car have been lifted right out of an ad in a glossy magazine. "_You _drive that Camaro?" Stiles manages.

"Yeah," Derek looks confused, bless him.

"It's just, I think that's the most beautiful car I've ever seen, you know, in person," Stiles explains. Though with Derek standing next to it, he fancies it might even top the things he's only seen in photos. "I was just coming over to get a quick look at it up close. I didn't even realise there was anyone—let alone you!—inside."

"Uh... thanks?" Derek says slowly. Or maybe Stiles has just been talking at a million miles an hour. Or both.

"Well, actually, thank_ you _for bringing this baby into my life." Stiles really wants to run a hand over that paint job, but he's not sure he should—but wait, his hand's moving of its own volition, he can't stop it, and yep, he's touching the bonnet now. Derek still hasn't killed him over the whole drink incident, so Stiles is relatively confident he'll walk away from this one alive too. Until his mouth goes ahead and asks, "can I drive it sometime?"

Derek masks his surprise at the comment better than Stiles himself does. "Not today," he says, and changes the subject by pointing over at Stiles' building. Part of Stiles whispers to itself that _that's not actually a no_. The rest is more than glad to walk away from this particular verbal mishap, so he leads Derek across the road and up the stairs to where his room is.

"My plans weren't actually that exciting," he babbles along the way. "I was just going to watch some Star Wars and eat crappy food. But we can do whatever you want, I have a lot of movies on my laptop and I can download any that I don't have if there's something in particular you want to watch."

Derek doesn't say much, but when they reach Stiles' room, he falls back into the permanently misshapen couch and lets out a long breath. It's then that Stiles realises how tired he looks—his eyes are shadowed underneath and a little bit red, like Stiles' get when he stays up all night staring at his computer screen. Which, if he's honest, is most nights.

"You look exhausted, man," Stiles says, going over to the dinky little bar fridge he and Scott keep in on corner of the room. He pulls out a can of coke for himself. "You want one?" he holds it up for Derek to see. "Otherwise we have instant coffee, maybe even some teabags lying around somewhere..."

"Coke's fine," Derek answers, so Stiles grabs another can and heads over to where Derek's sitting.

"If you'd rather sleep, that's fine too you know," Stiles offers.

Derek mumbles, "I have a confession."

"Yeah?"

"I haven't watched a Star Wars movie in three years."

Stiles gasps loudly—it's partly exaggerated for dramatic effect, but partly also deadly serious, because how does a person get by without watching Star Wars for _three years_?

"Okay, well this is now officially an intervention," he grins, setting up _A New Hope _and pressing play. "You no longer have my permission to close your eyes. I don't even want to see any extended blinking."

Derek's good to watch movies with. He's surprisingly responsive, laughing and shouting at the characters much like Stiles does. He also doesn't seem to mind that Stiles keeps a commentary running almost constantly, which a measure of true tolerance.

"You're actually really nice. Y'know, underneath that whole bad boy thing you've got going. Maybe the nicest person I know," Stiles says, a bit giddy from all the laughing he's just done at Derek's face when he suddenly remembered Luke and Leia were siblings.

"And you're the most ridiculous person I know," Derek shoots back, but there's the barest hint of a genuine smile twitching its way across his lips, and on Derek, that's so much. Stiles doesn't know how exactly he should feel, knowing he put that little zap of non-angry, non-sad emotion there.

He makes a valiant effort, but it's still not very long until Derek falls asleep. They're halfway into _The Empire Strikes Back_, and Stiles has well and truly dug into the sugary goodness of his sour worms when Derek's head drifts over to collide with his shoulder. He shivers lightly at the feel of warm breath ghosting over his bare neck. Stiles shifts carefully so that Derek's neck isn't at such an awkward angle, then settles back to keep watching the movie. He keeps his comments to himself so as not to wake him, and doesn't fight it when his own eyelids begin to grow heavy.

The next thing he knows, someone's fumbling with the door handle so loudly it can only be Scott, or someone very intoxicated. Stiles is rubbing his eyes and gathering up the sweets that are now spilled over his lap when Scott walks in, Allison trailing behind him.

There's a look of complete horror on Scott's face.

"What's he doing here?" Scott points to Derek, who's also returning to the land of the living, just a bit more slowly.

"We're watching Star Wars."

"But—" Scott starts, but then Derek cuts him off:

"McCall?" he asks, sounding groggy and confused.

"Wait, you know each other?" Stiles asks, looking between Scott and Derek who are now exchanging weird glances.

"Your girlfriend is _Allison Argent_?" Derek asks Scott at the same time as Allison asks Stiles,

"You're friends with Derek Hale?" at the same as time Scott asks Stiles,

"_He's _the guy you've been texting?" at the same as time Stiles asks Scott,

"_Derek_ is Mr. Angry?"

Stiles gapes at everyone.

"I've got to go," says Derek, who's already pushing past Scott and Allison and out the door before Stiles can even try to stop him.

"_What_ just happened?" Stiles groans, and lets his head loll back against the malformed couch cushion.

Derek's not entirely sure he isn't hallucinating right now. One moment he'd been there, leaning into Stiles, and then the next he was seeing Scott, the new kid from the band, holding hands with Kate Argent's niece, like some pleasant dream turned nightmare.

He starts his car and autopilots the way home. His phone buzzes three times along the way.

The first message is from Stiles: _Derek, what's going on?_

The next one is from Erica, letting him know that she and Boyd are 'going back to Paul's place for the night'.

Then there's another one from Stiles: _You okay?_

He doesn't answer any of them, but is thankful for the empty house as he wanders in and retrieves a half-empty bottle of Jack from the cupboard.

He wakes up with a thumping headache. Erica's leaning over him, prodding his face with her fingers, the long, manicured nails pressing into his cheeks. It's Monday, his brain registers. Thankfully, he has no classes on Mondays.

"It's after midday, babe," Erica's saying. "Up and at 'em."

"Mmno," he shifts away from her, nuzzling into his pillow.

"It went that badly, huh?" Erica pouts.

"No and yes."

"Well, you're going to have to explain to Boyd why you drank all his Jack, so I suggest you tell me what happened."

"I'll buy him more," Derek groans.

Erica sits on top of him.

"_Geddoffme_. Fine, I'll talk." She lets up just slightly. "Scott McCall's dating Allison Argent."

Erica does get off him, which means she must understand how bad the situation is. He's never specifically told her the full story, but she's both clever and nosy enough to have pieced it together.

"Maybe Allison's not like _her_. She doesn't have that man-eating air about her, from what I can tell. And I have experience with these things."

"Well maybe she's an even better liar than Kate."

"Yeah, maybe," Erica sighs. "Look, Derek, we've all heard the songs Scott's written about this girl; he's not going to break it off easily, if at all. If you want him to even entertain the idea, you're going to need to tell him what happened to you."

Derek knows this, but he's been trying very hard to un-know it. Maybe he could get Stiles to—no, that would be completely unfair of him. Derek grabs his spare pillow and pulls it down over his head.

"Either way, you need to drag yourself out of bed in the next five minutes or I'll have to listen to you complaining about how shitty oversleeping makes you feel. I'll bring you some caffeine," Erica pats him on the shoulder, and he hears the door creak as she leaves.

It's times like these when Derek remembers why he loves Erica—the times when she knows just what he needs and won't take any bullshit from him. He loves her and it hurts like hell, because she reminds him so strongly of Laura.

Once he's up, Derek checks his phone and finds he has one more text message from Stiles, received around three a.m. It says, _At least let me know that you got home in one piece._

_Still kicking_, he replies.

The band has practice in the evening. Derek doesn't say anything to Scott about their encounter, or about Allison Argent, and Scott resolutely avoids making eye contact with him. It's a problem, and it gets in the way of them making much progress with their music. He has to talk to Scott—he just hasn't figured out how yet. Stiles would know; he should ask him for help, but he doesn't know where to start with that conversation either, since he's done a pretty comprehensive job at ignoring him too, aside from that single brief message to confirm his continued existence.

He has to pick one way or the other, and as he watches Scott pack up his guitar Derek knows he can't fix this by himself. Chances are Scott wouldn't listen to him even if he knew exactly how to say what he needs to; the kid is stubborn and loyal, and Derek can imagine those traits being a great credit to him in other circumstances—but Derek isn't the one Scott's loyal to, he isn't the one he'll stand through storms to defend. Stiles, though?—Derek suspects that Stiles knows better than anyone how to get through to him.

He pulls his phone out and lets his fingers hover over the keyboard as he tries to compose an adequate message. Some things, he decides, are too much to say via some toneless electronic post-it-note.

The call button blinks at him, green and glowing. He presses his thumb against it.

Stiles picks up after two rings.

"Derek?" he sounds a little breathless. "What's going on?"

"I need your help," Derek says. "I need help explaining to Scott—" he falters.

Stiles jumps in to reassure him. "Tell Scott what? Whatever it is, I can help. Just tell me and I'll help, okay?"

"The woman I told you about. The one who... the fire. Her name was Kate Argent."

He hears a sharp intake of breath down the line. "Argent?" Stiles repeats. "Like _Allison Argent _type Argent?"

"Yeah, Stiles. Allison is her niece."

Stiles has never been of the opinion that his life's particularly simple. Simplicity didn't exactly go hand-in-hand with things like a parent dying, a father whose job put him in constant danger, and a level of hyperactive energy that kept him distracted about a hundred and fourteen percent of the time during his teenage years. Things hadn't felt simple when his dad had been hit by a car while investigating a spate of deadly wild animal attacks. Things sure as hell hadn't felt simple when he had to keep the patterning of bruises so consistent they'd practically been tattoos hidden from his dad so he wouldn't have to worry about Stiles getting beaten up at school. Anything that _was _simple generally wasn't the good kind of simple; it had been easy enough, for instance, to predict how he'd go in any given lacrosse game, but that was because he never once left the bench.

His friendship with Scott was perhaps the one good, uncomplicated thing that came naturally to Stiles—but now Scott is a part of the whole tangled mess that Stiles' help is apparently needed in solving.

"I'll talk to him tonight," he tells Derek. "I'm sure I can find some articles online to back me up. It'll only be a start, though."

"That sounds—Stiles, I appreciate this, I can't—I'm not good at—just, thanks." Hearing Derek's voice stammering through the phone is strange. It feels oddly intimate.

"It's okay, that's what I'm here for. Anything you need, Derek. I get that you're not feeling totally ready to do this—but Scott's my best friend and I... I just worry about him. So if there's any chance at all of history repeating itself, I'm glad you're talking about it."

Seriously, Stiles has never heard of a stupid family rivalry going this far. He read some of _Romeo and Juliet _for an English class one year, but he isn't going to go there right now. As far as he can see, all the Argents and the Hales had to argue about was the whole musical-competitors thing, and even in the case of the Hunt that's worth, what, a few grand of prize money and a spike in pseudo-fame levels? Maybe it's only Kate who was batshit crazy? Stiles hopes that's the case, he really, really does.

As promised, he spends some time searching up articles and court documents related to Kate Argent and the Hale fire. Some of the articles are brutal.

There are pictures of Derek, looking like he's barely holding it together;_ "Derek Hale, the brother of the woman killed in the fire, has so far exhibited very little emotion about the tragic events. Sources describe him as being somewhat antisocial and even behaving suspiciously in the weeks leading up to the fire..."_

There are some pieces that shout for minimal sentencing for Kate—_it was all an accident!_—and some that even go so far as to imply Laura Hale was suicidal. Stiles thinks he can taste bile in his mouth.

Fragments of the same short statement by Derek pop up in many of the articles. Stiles pieces the snippets together into something along the lines of: _"Laura worked frequent night shifts at the hospital. She took evening classes at the university. Often she came home in the early hours of the morning and slept through the day. She was quite a heavy sleeper. She would have been asleep in her room upstairs when the fire was lit."_

Stiles kept going until he found more from around the time of Kate's trial.

_"Confessed arsonist Kate Argent will today be tried for the murder of Laura Hale..."_

_"The uncle of a woman burned to death in a house fire has fled, casting suspicion upon himself when he failed to appear as a witness in court today..."_

_"...the Argent family remain supportive of Kate, with her father Gerard telling the _Times_ that..."_

_"Derek Hale showed no signs of emotion as he took the stand this afternoon..."_

_"Argent appeared amused as she told the court that she had 'only meant to burn the [music] gear, but Laura always was a bitch'..."_

_"...the jury found Kate Argent guilty of murder..."_

_"...Hale says Argent's conviction is little comfort."_

Stiles skims through the court reports, but they're long and full of jargon he doubts Scott will read a word of. He's got enough to begin with—proof that Allison's aunt did what she did—but it's Derek's story, and only Derek can tell it in full.

The sound of his cell phone ringing in his bag signals break time from his research. He digs around until he finds it.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Stiles? It's Allison."

Allison has never called Stiles before. She hasn't really even spoken to him before, not beyond small talk in a group setting. Why is she calling him?

Oh god, has something terrible happened to Scott?

"Why are you calling me?" he squeaks.

"I need a favour," she says. "I got your number from Scott's phone."

"Figured."

"I need to talk to Derek Hale. I know you're friends with him, and there's no way he'll agree to listen if I just approach him—I've tried—but if you could just get him to stop for a second and—"

"What is it that you want to say to Derek?"

He hears Allison taking a deep breath. "I need to explain that I'm sorry."

Stiles is busy hatching a diabolical plan. He's finding it a pretty satisfying pastime. From his conversation with Allison over the phone, Stiles thinks she's genuine about wanting to apologise, wanting to explain that she and her father are ashamed to be linked in any way to what Kate did. He thinks it could be good for Derek to hear that, after the sorts of things Stiles has read about other members of the Argent family saying. That said, there's no way he's going to dump Derek in this alone.

_Hey, swing by Pat's tomorrow afternoon? I finish at two. _Stiles sends the message to Derek, Scott and Allison.

Respectively, he gets an _Okay_, a _Sure thing_, and a _Thank you _in return_. _

So the plan is underway. God, he hopes it works.

"What's going on with you today?" Lydia asks, as Stiles wipes up the third puddle of hot milk he's spilled in about the last twenty minutes. He can't pretend not to know what she's talking about. Before he can figure out what answer to give her, though, Lydia's leaning over the counter flirting with two cute, tall guys who look exactly like each other.

"Stiles, this is Aiden, and this is Ethan," she nods in the direction of each one. "Ethan's studying sports medicine, and Aiden does economics. His share portfolio is almost as impressively managed as mine."

Aiden doesn't seem to mind the remark, so either he's sufficiently aware of Lydia's genius that he takes it as a compliment, or he's too preoccupied with her cleavage to take notice. Ethan doesn't seem anywhere near as interested in the cleavage, though. Stiles gets his explanation for that a second later when Lydia pipes up with,

"We were wondering if you'd like to come see a movie with us tonight."

So, a double date. Ethan's looking down at him—god the guy's tall—with interest and Stiles knows that he should be interested right back at him. Very interested; Ethan is, objectively, an attractive guy—but that's just it: everything Stiles feels about him in this moment is just objective. Ethan's not the guy for Stiles in that he's not... he's not...

He's not Derek.

"I'm busy tonight. Maybe you could ask Danny," he tells Lydia, and throws Ethan a polite smile.

Lydia just smirks like he's done exactly what she wanted him to, and Stiles realises, too late, that he's played right into her grasp.

Aiden comes back to pick Lydia up on a sleek black motorcycle. Stiles would be jealous (and maybe he still is, just a tad; it's a really nice bike) if he didn't see a familiar, even sleeker black Camaro pulling up a moment later. There's a new directness to that comparison—bike versus car, Ethan versus Derek, anybody versus Derek in _that way_—that worries Stiles briefly, but that's before Derek waltzes through the door and looks at Stiles like he's happy, even relieved, to see him. It's an expression that makes it hard to remember what it was about Derek that so terrified Stiles the first time he (literally) ran into him, just a handful of days ago. Makes him feel like maybe this time he won't fall into a screaming heap of awkwardness just because he has a crush, as has always been the norm.

Stiles finishes handing over to Jess who's just arrived for her shift, and is making his way over to where Derek's seated himself at the same table as before, up the back of the shop.

Scott and Allison arrive together, which is probably for the best, since this way nobody has a chance to run away before the gathering is complete. Specifically, Derek.

"What's she doing here?" Derek grits out, and turns on Stiles with a look of betrayal that physically _hurts. _Stiles never, ever wants to be the cause of that look again.

He instinctively puts a hand on Derek's shoulder, and the contact seems to help. Derek doesn't get up or storm out, which means things are already panning out better than they did in, like, three quarters of the scenarios Stiles has pictured in his head over the course of the day. He still looks exceedingly unhappy, though.

"So, I guess I have some explaining to do," Stiles starts, receiving a disgruntled mutter of agreement from Derek. "Allison has some things she needs to say to Derek. Derek, I really think she means this, man, but all the same I'm here and Scott's here and any or all of us can bail if you need that. Just, I think you should give her a chance first. Just one chance, okay?" Stiles' hand is still resting on the tense muscles of Derek's arm, and just as he's about to take it away, Derek's hand comes up and captures it, holds it there.

Scott and Stiles are at a separate table just across the room from where Derek and Allison sit facing each other, pretending not to be watching. It's like they're being chaperoned on some painful early-teenage date.

Allison is flustered, Derek can see that. He just waits for her to start, making no particular efforts to make her any more or any less comfortable.

"I've imagined what I'd say to you so many times, I hardly know where to start now," she says, picking at the sleeves of her jacket. "I guess I could start by saying sorry, not that that really..." she trails off. Takes a deep breath, steadies herself. Meets his gaze and begins again. "My aunt was misguided. There aren't words strong enough for the kind of misguided she was. Is. I hate her for what she did, I don't want to be anything like her, I don't want people to think that I am."

Derek gives her a nod.

Allison continues, quieter. "She killed my mother."

That takes Derek by surprise. He'd read about Allison's mother—a suicide, the papers had said. Couldn't take the negative press flying around the family.

"Mom had a history of depression. It was severe, but she—we were managing it. She and Kate were close, they had a lot of things in common. Kate had to know what it would do to her, but she just... didn't care. I don't know what she thought she was doing—she used to spout some bullshit about doing it for the _family name_—but she wasn't thinking of us when she lit that fire. She wasn't thinking of anyone, if she was thinking at all.

"The media frenzy was frightening. Horrible. I'm sure you hardly need me to describe it. Anyway, it was too much for her. She sharpened up a kitchen knife, and..."

Allison looks like she's about to cry if she finishes that sentence, and Derek doesn't need this to be any harder, so he intervenes.

"Did she tell you that we slept together?" he asks bluntly. It's a key—_ha, key_—part of all this that surprisingly never got out. He and Kate had been sneaky about quite how intimate they'd been, and when Kate didn't bring it up in the story she told the cops, Derek kept his mouth shut too. He'd been afraid, ashamed, and completely disoriented in a world suddenly emptied of his Laura.

The look on Allison's face says clearly that no, Kate never mentioned their affair to her family either.

"You and Kate?"

"Yes. Now do you see why I don't like the idea of you and Scott?"

Heavy silence rests between them for a while.

Allison breaks it: "She had a key." It's only a guess, but it's spot on. Allison sounds even more mortified than she has so far.

"I thought I loved her," Derek confirms.

Allison looks down, shakes her head as though to try and clear her thoughts.

"I want to offer you something," she says. "If we—if the Silver Arrows win at the Hunt, I want to give you half the money. I've talked to some of the band already; a few of them are new and only know as much about this as anyone who's watched the TV news a few times in the past two years does, so it's not fair of me to expect it of them—but those of us who did know Kate... we know that nothing can make up for the real damage, but you also lost a lot of property, a lot of instruments and furniture in the blaze and it's a start, you know? A step."

He's surprised. Again. Allison Argent is not what he expected her to be; hollow apologies are what he's always expected from the Argents, if any, but Derek is increasingly inclined to believe Allison's are heartfelt. The gesture of sharing the prize money goes above and beyond. Kate would be appalled. Derek lets the shadow of a smile tug at the edges of his mouth.

"You'll have some stiff competition for that cheque, you know."

It's not trust, but it's closer to it.

"Bring it on."

Derek looks across at Stiles just in time to see the concerned scrunch of his face melt into a pleased grin, and he feels just a little bit proud to have put it there.

Before they leave, he and Allison shake hands. Her grip is firm, and her smile warms her eyes in a way Kate's never did. She leans in to speak quietly to him.

"I know Scott and I have only been together for a month, but... I love him, Derek. When you find someone who's just _right _for you, who gets you and smooths out your rough parts and gives you balance again... it just _works_."

Part of Derek remains hesitant to believe any of Allison's words, wants to dismiss them all as juvenile and naive, and believe they'll be retracted by this time next month... but he can't quite manage it. An increasingly insistent part of him knows exactly what she means.

When he gets home, Derek sits down with a guitar and a notepad and mucks around with some chords he's been toying with. He thinks about what Stiles said about latching on to things that felt too big and turbulent to explain through a combination of metaphor and music. Anger. Sadness. He's not sure how to start; should he be addressing someone as he writes? Laura? Stiles?

Stiles texts him. _Sorry I was a scheming bastard today. If it means anything, I'm totally proud of you. You shouldn't be unhappier than she is. You don't deserve to be. _

Derek presses his fingers into the frets and turns those words over in his head. Damn Stiles and his way with words.

_I won't be unhappier than you are_, Derek scrawls hurriedly, ignoring the lines ruled across the page.

It's surprisingly easy, after that. He thinks of Kate, thinks of all the anger he's never been able to direct at anyone but himself and instead aims it all outwards.

Derek discovers that between the rhythm, rhyme and repetition of the words, the song gains enough momentum to guide him through to the end as much as he guides it. He lays down a statement and it pulls the next line into existence as he thinks through the possible rhymes to match it; one metaphor leads him to another and before he knows it what he's written is almost its own creature, telling him things he didn't know he knew, in ways he hadn't considered before.

When he finally grows tired, Derek picks his phone back up and replies to Stiles. _It's okay. It helped. _He adds, _I just wrote half a song_, and sends.

_That's awesome! _Stiles replies, and Derek smiles just imagining the kind of Stiles-enthusiasm that comes with three exclamation marks. _I can't wait to hear it._

This reminds Derek that the words he's just pulled from somewhere deep inside himself are, if the band plays the song, going to be heard by a lot of other people. Strangers, people he knows. Stiles. It's a daunting thought, a sort of vulnerability that doesn't come from singing other people's lyrics.

_I can't wait to show you_, he tells Stiles—and it's scary, but it's true.

PART TWO

It's weird to think that he's only known Stiles for six weeks; he's fitted himself so neatly into the gaps in Derek's life that Derek's not sure how he managed before they collided. Maybe he didn't really. Their texting grounds him, even when it's just clusters of incoherent words and chunks of gibberish, references to Star Wars or Star Trek or Batman. Derek regularly nestles into the corner of Stiles' lumpy couch and allows himself to be educated; he's been well and truly reacquainted with all the Star Wars films by now. Derek can't imagine it ever getting old.

There's only one week left until the Hunt, and the band have been rehearsing solidly. Scott's fitting in well, and he and Isaac have put together a great ballad, Isaac tempering some of Scott's more exuberantlyrics with his own subtler style. Boyd and Erica have the opening tune covered—a heavy, saucy number that will showcase Erica's vocal talent and no doubt give her a chance to grind up against the microphone stand a bit. It's just Derek's own song that's not quite finished yet; it's almost there, but he can't help but feel like there needs to be a final verse added to balance it out. He's afraid he's hit a wall. He asked Erica if she'd finish it for him, but she'd looked over it and shaken her head, saying it was Derek's to write, not hers. He understands that she's right.

Derek is on campus and in need of coffee. He's also got another paper to start planning, so he decides to head over to Pat's, just on the off-chance that Stiles is rostered on.

He's in luck.

"Hey Derek," Stiles says, sounding agitated. "Boy, do you have the best timing _ever_."

"What is it?" Derek asks, and Stiles sets about making his coffee order automatically. He hasn't had to repeat it since the very first time, but it still gratifies him to walk in here and be known, familiar.

"Three o'clock," Stiles replies under his breath, giving a discreet sideways nod. Derek follows the line with his eyes and sees the problem.

The problem being Matt fucking Daehler. His fists clench, the nails digging sharply into his palms. Every time he sees Matt images assault him, memories of the time he caught him slipping something into a girl's drink; the _multiple_ times he's seen him plying drunk boys and girls with extra alcohol at various clubs and parties; most recently, the time he had Stiles shoved up against some slimy alley wall—and, years ago now, the time Derek got up in the morning and found Erica puffy-eyed and slumped under the spray of a freezing shower, still in her party dress. _Don't tell anyone,_ she'd begged him, and it hadn't been right but it hadn't been his decision to make, either.

The sound Derek makes might be a growl.

"He brought these," Stiles points to a stack of fliers on the counter. Derek picks one up and sees that they're advertising the Hunt. He knows Matt's some kind of amateur photographer, and it seems he's been recruited to put together some promotional material. By far the largest picture is one of Allison Argent, looking focused and gripping a microphone tightly in one hand. 'THE SILVER ARROWS' screams the first row of the line-up list. Derek and the Werewolves feature only in the very finest print at the bottom of the page, and while it annoys him, Derek isn't surprised. A band called the Alphas is the second to be listed. Derek has heard rumours about them, but he doesn't know which (if any) of them hold any truth; the word going around is that the lead singer is a blind man who's a post-doctoral researcher and the rest of the members are all front-men who have been poached from other bands. He's heard that they do five-part harmonies; that their guitarists are twins who are so perfectly in sync it's like they're the same person; that their bassist can play an entire gig with her toes; that their drummer smashes through a kit every time they practise.

He's certainly interested to hear them perform.

"The _Alphas_," says Stiles. "Why not just name themselves 'the Douchebags'?"

Derek snorts out a laugh.

"Anyway," Stiles' expression turns grim again. "Matt kept asking me what time I got off work, saying he wanted to show me something afterwards. I told him six, even though I'm actually off in an hour, but he said he'd just wait around anyway, like he knew I was lying, and oh shit, oh my god, thank goodness you showed up when you did. You continue to be my saviour, man."

"Breathe," Derek implores him, because he doesn't think Stiles has actually taken a breath in the past minute. "It's okay, I was planning to stay and get a bit of work done, I'll finish up in an hour and take you home."

"Thank you, thank you so much, I could kissyou right now," Stiles rambles, the tension visibly leaking out of him. Until he seems to realise what he's said, and then his ears pink with embarrassment. His mouth drops open like he wants to say something, but either can't get the words out or thinks better of saying any more.

Derek just concentrates on looking anywhere but at Stiles' lips.

It's really difficult, though; they're so soft-looking and with the way Stiles tongue pushes against them, they're like magnets for his eyes—

"Um, here's your coffee," Stiles says, and Derek, to his immense relief, snaps out of it.

"Thanks," he says, a little roughly. "I'll just be up the back, same as usual. I'll see you in an hour."

Five minutes before Stiles is supposed to finish up, Matt decides it's the perfect time to get up and hover around the counter. In light of this development, Derek decides the same thing.

"Hale," Matt says, and smiles an utterly unfriendly smile. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, Derek and I are friends," Stiles answers for him, "since, you know, you tried to—"

"The question is, what are _you _doing here?" Derek says tightly.

Matt picks up one of the Hunt fliers and shoves it in Derek's face. "I was just dropping these off."

"But why are you _still _here?"

"Maybe I fancied a coffee."

"You've been here for four hours," Stiles refutes.

Matt is beginning to sound more impatient as he grits out, "well, maybe I just wanted to sit and relax for a while." He turns and fixes his beady stare on Derek, and Derek tries not to think about all the things those eyes have seen, because he needs to stand his ground right now and he's not sure he can do it with those sorts of thoughts choking him. "Or maybe," Matt continues, "I wanted to wait for my buddy Stiles, have a little catch up, see to some unfinished business."

Rage flares inside him, and before he can try to stifle it Derek has Matt shoved roughly up against the counter. He doesn't roar at him, at least, so he counts it as a victory for self-restraint.

"Hey! Hey! Let me go!" Matt says loudly. There aren't a lot of other people in the coffee shop, but all of them are looking at him now, so Derek retracts the arm that had been pinned against Matt's chest.

"You can leave now," he growls, and honestly, it's a _big_ show of mercy.

Matt hesitates, but Derek helps him to the right conclusion with a burning glare.

"Now," he reiterates, and Matt finally backs away and out the door.

People must still be watching, Derek realises, because Stiles calls out, "nothing to see here, folks."

"Sorry for making a scene," he mumbles. "I can't even tell you how much of a creep that guy is." And that's literally true; he promised he wouldn't tell.

"I have at least some idea," Stiles answers with a grimace. "Don't apologise for that—though it's probably a good thing you didn't rip his face off in front of everyone. You kind of looked like you wanted to for a second there." Stiles heaves out a sigh and it's like watching a jumping castle deflate. He leans his elbows on the bench, runs his fingers through his hair and then looks up at Derek. "I'm just glad you were here."

"Me too," Derek says.

Stiles still hasn't heard this song that Derek's been working on. There are five days left until the Hunt, the big show where Derek and Scott's band, and Allison's band—and the band of anyone who has a band, really—will be playing, and Stiles can't remember the last time he was this excited for something. He's usually got energy to boot, sure, but that doesn't always mean actual enthusiasm. For this gig, though, he's keen—and weirdly nervous, because he knows that both Scott and Derek have been putting a hell of a lot into their preparations and he wants it to go well for them. Stiles has no idea how Scott is calmer than he is about this. He suspects it has something to do with Allison, though, and whatever magical quality she possesses that makes him walk around like he's stoned most of the time.

"Can I come to one of your practices?" he asks Derek one afternoon, while they're sitting on Derek's couch (which is _way _more comfortable than Stiles' couch) watching Derek's TV (which is way bigger than Stiles' own.) Stiles has been run off his feet lately juggling his shifts at Pat's with finishing a bunch of case notes, several essays and a presentation—some of which have been due this week, and some of which he's completing in advance so his weekend is actually free for the Hunt and whatever celebrations or commiserations are likely to follow. He's feeling like he has the uni work under control for the moment, though.

Derek looks like he's considering Stiles question, but in the end he shakes his head. "You could, if you really wanted to, of course. But I think it'd be better if you waited for the big night. It's less than a week away."

Stiles whines. "I'm not good at waiting."

"Waiting can be good," Derek says. "It can make things more exciting."

Stiles can see that he has a point, yes, but it's not universally applicable.

"Not always," he protests. "Sometimes waiting just gets you nowhere and you get left behind."

"You won't get left behind because you wait a few days to hear some terrible song."

"I guess," Stiles concedes. "Though that's not what I'm waiting for. I'm waiting to hear a Derek Hale original."

Derek doesn't answer, just stretches his arms out along the back of the couch, one of them landing behind Stiles head. Stiles sneaks an admiring glance at the sculpted, flexing muscle, and just at _Derek in general_, and contemplates some more of the pitfalls and benefits of waiting. If he waits as long as possible before finally going insane and throwing himself on top of a poor unsuspecting Derek, for instance, that's probably for the best.

On the night of the Hunt, Lydia insists on him coming over to her place to get ready. What this means is Stiles sits around and is made to nod or shake his head in response to an endless parade of potential outfits, then watches as she undergoes her extensive makeup regime. Lydia's new boyfriend, Aiden, is apparently in another of the bands playing tonight. Lydia is sure to inform Stiles that their double date went well—for Danny and Ethan as well as Lydia and Aiden.

They get dinner from a place that does sandwiches, which means that Lydia can have chicken and salad while Stiles can order something cheesy and meatbally. They start off with a few cheap drinks, too.

"Aiden and Ethan are hosting a party after the show, Danny and I will be there if you want to come," Lydia tells Stiles.

It's bizarre how casually Stiles can process Lydia Martin inviting him to parties these days, considering how he'd have reacted aged sixteen. It helps, of course, that Stiles is substantially more aware of himself now—in particular his notable preference for people of the dude variety.

"I'll keep it in mind," he says easily. He knows he'll definitely go if Derek will be there, but he's not sure what Derek's plans are for afterwards, yet. "Depends what Scott and stuff are doing."

"I'm not even going to pretend that you fool me for a second, Stilinski," Lydia teases, and Stiles just laughs happily because, even though it means he can't get away with a damn thing, it's never stopped being great listening to her unashamedly knowing the shit out of everything.

Words like _hot_, _stuffy _and _sweaty_ spring to mind when Stiles thinks about describing the mass of excitable young adults around him, jammed tightly together until they move like a single organism. Lydia pushes and sweet-talks her way to the front, dragging Stiles along by the wrist, so they end up with an outstanding view and a huge, deafening speaker right nearby.

The first band to play is a four-piece heavy metal act that Stiles doesn't quite catch the name of. Their songs all sound similar, a mush of rough electric guitar sounds and fast, hard drumming that unfortunately loses its definition amongst the noise of the crowd. Ethan, Aiden and Danny join them up the front, and while Ethan and Danny try to include him to start with, they also clearly want to put their hands and mouths all over each other, so Stiles becomes the awkward fifth wheel. He's accustomed to such roles in social situations, so it doesn't bother him _that _much.

Until a photographer starts working his way across the gap between the crowd and the stage, snapping up pictures of the next act, two bearded boys dressed in plaid who are considerably softer and very alternative.

"Stilinski," Matt lowers his camera and stares at him in a way which Stiles suspects Matt doesn't think of as scary. Stiles, on the other hand, _does_. He backs away from the barrier, but Matt reaches out a hand and catches him, holding him there.

"Let go of me."

"Don't be like that," Mat says, scolding, as though Stiles is a child who's stuck out his tongue instead of being polite.

"_Let go of me," _he repeats, trying not to sound panicked.

Another hand lands on Stiles arm, near where Matt's is gripping him bruisingly tight. Stiles has perhaps never been so relieved to see the unmistakeable fuchsia nails of one Lydia Martin.

Oh, and the towering, well-muscled figure of Aiden looming beside her.

Matt releases Stiles before Lydia even opens her mouth to demand it, picking up his camera again and turning back towards the stage.

"Thanks," Stiles says to Lydia, rubbing his arm.

"You're welcome," she nods, "but you're going to explain to me right now why Matt _dealer _Daehler knows your name."

Stiles really shouldn't be surprised to hear that Matt and drugs go together—it's not like he actually knows the guy, and all that he does know is that he's incredibly dodgy—and he isn't surprised, not exactly, but it's still not what he expected to be hearing right here, right now, and from Lydia no less.

"How do you know he deals?" he asks.

Lydia just looks at him in that way that says, _isn't is obvious? I know everything_.

"Alright, fair enough," Stiles concedes.

Lydia keeps looking at him, and—oh right, explaining.

"You know how I said Derek rescued me from this creep I was with the night we met at Jungle?" he begins, but knows he won't have to finish because the understanding is already written all over Lydia's face.

"We should keep an eye on him tonight," she says.

"I was planning on avoiding him if at all poss—" Stiles begins, but Lydia holds up a finger to cut him off, and looks unseeingly to her left, a sign Stiles' brain has learned to translate as _Lydia has a plan._

"There are undercover policemen here, Stiles, I've picked out at least one so far," Lydia prompts.

Stiles grins when he catches on. "...and it's absolutely our duty to assist the good work of officers of the law wherever we can."

Aiden leaves to go and get ready with his band, and a few acts later that group called the Alphas are taking the stage. There's a slender girl with smooth, dark skin and long, straight black hair, who's barefoot and leading an older man who's holding the crook of her arm in one hand and a cane in the other. She leads him to the seat by the keyboard. Then there's a huge guy with tattoos and not much hair who twirls drumsticks between his fingers in a way that has Stiles imagining all the ways it would be possible to kill a person with them. Or, you know, without them; the guy's bare hands look deadly enough. And then the guitarists—

—the guitarists are Ethan and Aiden. They're wearing low slung jeans and no shirts whatsoever. Stiles can't help but observe that they are really, really shirtless... and yet he still finds himself feeling oddly indifferent. It's like he's forgotten he even likes the sight of rock hard abs.

That is, rock hard abs other than Der—

Lydia, and the rest of the crowd, squeal as they take their positions and launch into their opening number.

The Alphas play covers. _Three _covers—nothing _but _covers. Sure, one of them is up there in the top few most skilful renditions of _Stairway To Heaven _that Derek's ever heard, but the point is he could go home and listen to the real deal on more than one of his Zeppelin CDs or any given classic rock playlist online. It's an incredible song—and the blind man he's been hearing about lately takes to the keys like he's Ray Charles—but it's not new, there's nothing unexpected about it, and it sounds distinctly impersonal. It's not _theirs_, and he can feel that as he listens.

There are still two bands left before Derek and the Werewolves are due to take the stage, and Derek's sitting with Isaac around the side of the stage looking over copies of their song lyrics, mostly just for something to do. The song he wrote himself—the one which will close their set—still pricks at him as though it's incomplete, like he hasn't done it right, hasn't been sufficiently honest. He never managed to pull together new lyrics for a final verse, just threw in a repeat of the first one at the end. This way, it almost makes a big, angry circle—a story of loss, gradual emotional disentanglement, learning where to direct guilt and blame, then a reiteration of that initial sadness and fear and rage. It strikes him as a story of ignorance, when he reads over it like that; of reasoning things out and yet still dwelling in the past rather than putting any of it into action and moving on.

Derek thinks of Stiles. It occurs to him that he thinks of Stiles often these days, that Stiles' face has been overwriting images of Kate's that would otherwise still be playing in the same old pathetic loop through his mind.

Suddenly, two bands before he's meant to perform, it's perfectly clear to him how the last verse it supposed to go.

He turns to Isaac. "Do you have a pen?" he asks.

Stiles is, overall, less than impressed by The Alphas. He tries his best not to let it show, though, since Lydia and Danny are right at either one of his elbows clapping and cheering supportively for their respective significant others. Stiles doesn't have to exaggerate when he claims that Ethan and Aiden with a pair of guitars in their hands are like nothing he's ever heard before; they're perfectly in time, perfectly in tune, weaving harmonies between them that give Stiles goose bumps. It's just that the rest of the performance, while virtually perfect technically, is a little bit soulless compared to the original tunes other groups have slammed out so far tonight.

They've been tracking Matt's movements throughout the show, but so far all he's done is snap pictures down the front, stalking from one end of the stage to the other and back to get shots of all the band members.

That is, until it's the Silver Arrows moving on to the stage. Then, Matt stays right in the centre, directly below Allison Argent and the microphone stand she grips like a weapon as she belts out low, sure vocals positively dripping with attitude. Stiles is one hundred percent certain that, by the time their set ends, Matt hasn't taken a single photo of any band member but her—and while he gets that she's a captivating performer, he also knows creepy obsession when he sees it.

Allison comes down to join them in the crowd while the next band is playing, and Stiles takes her gently by the arm.

"How much do you know about that guy?" he says into her ear, pointing at Matt, who's back to roaming along the edge of the stage.

Allison's smile disappears. So, she knows _something_, that's for sure.

"He went to my high school," she explains. "We went on a date, once. It was kind of an accident, really—anyway, he was always taking photos then too, and he left his camera in my car when I was dropping him home afterwards. I looked through it and found all these photos of me. Like, _a lot _of photos of me. At school, out jogging..." she pauses and her eyebrows pull together with concern,"...even _in my room_," she finishes. "And then when he found me looking through them, he told me I should come into his house to see the rest. I drove away in a hurry and made sure I was never alone around him again."

"Jesus," Stiles swears—because apparently the kind of freaky he's personally experienced from Matt is the tip of a goddamn iceberg of freaky.

Allison nods, then leans back in to speak more cautiously into Stiles' ear. "Did you know he's a drug dealer now?" she says.

"Yes, actually; I found that out approximately forty minutes ago," Stiles answers. "You don't happen to know who he might be selling to, do you?"

She shakes her head apologetically, but then snaps up to look straight at Stiles, and he can almost see the metaphorical light bulb glowing above her.

"Are you trying to get him caught? Because, if you are, then I want to help you do it."

"Him." Lydia points discreetly to a blond man in a Metallica t-shirt and fitted dark blue jeans.

"Are you sure?" Stiles asks.

Lydia just glares at him.

"Alright then. So we find him after we've dug up some info about Matt's dodgy dealings. Which—how exactly are we planning to do that, by the way?"

"Well, I'm sure you could just go and ask him if he'd sell you some coke," Lydia suggests, then laughs at the horrified expression overtaking Stiles' face. "God, don't freak out, Stilinski. I'll get Aiden to talk to him. He told me Matt's actually approached him before, at a party, so he shouldn't be too suspicious."

Lydia sends Aiden out to lean over the barrier and whisper in Matt's ear.

Two minutes later, Aiden's back. "He's keen to meet up with my 'friend who's interested in buying a little something' when he takes a break from photography," he reports in a low voice.

"When's that likely to be?"

"Derek and the Werewolves' set," Aiden says, and gives Stiles a look which could possibly be described as apologetic. "Matt says he can't be bothered with taking any pictures of them."

Stiles had noticed the distinct lack of coverage Derek and Scott's band received on the fliers Matt had made—plus he's witnessed first-hand the lack of love Derek and Matt have for one another—so he's hardly taken aback. It is annoying though; he'd rather that everyone could be here to make supportive noises for his friends' group. Stiles can be loud, though, so he'll just have to concentrate on making enough of a racket to compensate.

"He says he wants Stiles to come, too," Aiden says, and every train of thought in Stiles' whole brain stops in its tracks.

"What? Why?" he asks, and it's obvious he sounds a little desperate—but you know what, _he is_, so who gives a damn—

"Look, I don't know why he wants you there," Aiden says, "but I'll watch your back. What I _do _know if that Hale's band are coming on in all of about two minutes, and we need to let our friendly Metallica fan over there know what's going on."

Stiles knows there's no wiggle room, no time to find any. He gives Aiden his best nod of solidarity. Derek will be out of the picture, but at least Matt seemed just as intimidated by Aiden.

"I'll go talk to our buddy," Stiles volunteers, and starts pushing his way through the throng of bodies to where Mr. Metallica stands, close to the edge. He searches briefly for a smooth opening line. "Uh hi, dude, man, dude-man," is what comes out, but he works through it, slouching too-familiarly next to the guy and pretending it isn't awkward at all—which, at least, is something he's very well practiced at. Stiles has, like, a billion hours of fieldwork and experience in wading right on through awkwardness so thick he sometimes has to use an ice pick to crack it. His teenage years might be described as 'character-building'.

"Can I help you?" the guy answers gruffly, and yep, Stiles has dealt with more than enough police officers to confirm one hundred percent that this guy is a cop. He's constantly flickering between holding himself the way he'd normally be expected to on the job and overcompensating with the sort of glowers rebellious thirteen-year-olds dole out while they sit in parks smoking cigarettes they weren't able to buy for themselves, and Stiles briefly thanks god that this man is a cop and not an actor.

"Metallica, huh," Stiles gestures to the cop's t-shirt. "Good stuff, am I right." Stiles doesn't actually like Metallica much, but nobody needs to know that right now.

"Yeah," the Mr. Metallica grunts, and Stiles is now pretty sure that he doesn't much like Metallica either.

"So, ah," Stiles leans in a little closer, slaps a hand down on Mr. Not-so-much-Metallica's shoulder, "I'm not one for drugs myself, but if you're interested I've heard the guy up front with the camera's looking to sell some tonight."

The cop stiffens. He's _really_ not a very good undercover cop at all.

"How—" the guy starts to ask, and _oh my god_, thinks Stiles, _I could do a better job of this. _

He cuts Mr. Cop off before he can say whatever utterly stupid thing was about to pass from his lips. "Sheriff's kid," he whispers in explanation. "Now, he thinks he's going to be making a sale to a keen friend of mine around the side of the building any minute now. That's where you come in."

The crowd roars and whistles around them and when Stiles looks up he sees Erica strolling onto the stage wearing an outfit that she's clearly purchased entirely from the lingerie section. She bends over deliberately to fiddle with the dials on her amp and whistles intensify. Then Isaac and Boyd are setting up too, somewhat less conspicuous in plain jeans and t-shirts. Scott comes on next, and Stiles takes a moment to screech out a few garbled howls of excitement for his best friend. Scott grins out at the crowd the whole time, and Stiles knows he's having the time of his life. He really, _really _wishes he could stay and properly be a part of it.

And then there's Derek. His faded jeans and well-worn singlet aren't anything special in and of themselves, but the way they fit every part of him as he walks out, bass slung over his shoulders, and stands before the microphone like he owns the place has Stiles' legs threatening to abort their whole standing-up mission. Derek's trademark scowl is fixed firmly in place.

As Boyd starts pounding out a vicious rhythm on the bass drum the whole ensemble comes together; Scott and Erica claw and thrash at their guitars like their lives depend on it and the sound is wonderfully rough, fast-paced but heavy, dragging and bending suggestively in just the right places.

"Is that him?" the cop asks, tapping on Stiles' shoulder and reminding him that the perfection of this musical moment isn't something he gets to enjoy right now, because it never rains, does it?—no—it pours.

Stiles scans the crowd and spots Matt without much trouble. He nods, and the two of them head towards the side exit and out into the night air, sharply fresh after the hot, smothering press of the mosh pit back inside. It also feels much more real, when the blanket of communal excitement and warmth has been stripped away. Stiles does his best not to look like he's bothered by it.

"Hi there," says Matt, joining them and pulling the door shut behind him.

_Aiden_, Stiles thinks, _where the hell is Aiden?_

"Hi," answers the cop.

"I still don't see why I have to be here," Stiles whines, because it's _so very true_, and also because there's no point pretending to be calmer than he is when that might clue Matt in to the fact he's being set up.

Except...

"Oh, don't worry, you're just here to make sure everything goes smoothly."

Except that...

Matt's hand reaches behind him, apparently digging around in his back pocket.

Something's off. Cop looks nervous as he rifles around in his own pocket and pulls out a wad of cash. Stiles hopes a little nervousness won't give the game away; heaps of the uni kids who go around buying drugs are probably a bit scared, at least to start with, right?

Except that Matt already knows.

Stiles realises it a second too late—and it's a goddamn _big_ second, because now he's looking down the barrel of a gun.

"Oh my god, holy crap, where the fuck did you get a gun—" he blurts out.

Matt waves the gun in his face in a way that suggests Stiles is expected to shut up from now on. His face has hardened in a way that terrifies Stiles; he's clearly stressed by the situation, clearly knows he's in trouble, but he doesn't seem hugely afraid of the fact that he's currently wielding a firearm. Stiles knew Matt was shady, but he hadn't come across as the full-blown murdering type before—now that look has him wondering how many bodies stashed underground might have Matt's bullets in them. Wondering if he's really crazy enough to shoot a police officer. Stiles can't even begin to comprehend how disconcerting it is that he actually has no idea anymore; it's not the easiest thing to do, wrapping your head around the fact that the creep who's been bothering you has, in a moment, leapt from Attempted Date Rapist levels on the _I Really Want You To Stay Away From Me_ scale to Actual Possible Serial Killer.

He takes a slow step backwards, trying to put himself out of lunging distance.

"Don't move," Matt snaps, but Stiles has already gained a few feet and that's a sufficient achievement for now.

"Okay," he agrees, holds his hands in the air.

The rhythmic thunder of music leaks out of the hall, muffled such that Stiles can determine that vocals are indeed happening but not which words are being sung. He can hear Derek's voice slipping between growling screams, strong sung notes and perfectly wolfish howls that would sound pathetic if Stiles—or anybody else—tried to replicate them.

He wants to be back inside, in the crowd, he really does. That said, he'd settle for pretty much anywherebut here right now; he's not feeling picky at all.

If his cop buddy has a weapon on him, he's not doing a very good job at getting it out. Stiles starts to wonder whether they'll bury him near his mom. He hopes they will. He hopes Derek will come to the funeral, too.

That's when Stiles sees another man, older, with darker hair and a worn-looking AC/DC shirt on, sneaking around the side of the building behind Matt, gun in hand. Stiles takes care to track him only in his peripheral vision and tries not to outwardly show the flare of relief the sight triggers.

"Matt, don't do this," Stiles pleads, and begins inching back another step. Tiny, infinitesimal increments.

"Stay where you are!" Matt screams, and it's like the last semblance of composure he has is a tangible thing that's cracking and falling away. Stiles can see that, on the one hand, it's a good sign that Matt doesn't seem to have enough left up his sleeve to like his options here—but on the other, Stiles is decidedly not crazy about the fact that that the guy with the gun pointed at his head is panicking.

"Sorry," he stops, makes a show of surrendering just like before.

Through the corner of his eye, Stiles can see the other policeman now just a few steps away from Matt's back. His footfalls are impressively silent, and Stiles is glad that at least one of the officers at the venue is competent. It's kind of a huge relief right now.

"Drop the gun!" Cop Two shouts, having decided he's close enough to have the upper hand.

Matt jumps, pulls the trigger of his gun to fire a shot which misses both Stiles and Cop One by a margin Stiles wishes was larger and hitting the ground behind them. Looking at Matt's face, he's nearly as surprised that that actually just happened as Stiles is. And god, Stiles' legs are about to betray him, fuzzy and disobedient like they're made of loose dust held together with jelly and don't answer to his authority anymore.

Cop Two takes advantage of Matt's hesitation, and Stiles drops to the ground while they struggle. Cop Two is, luckily, the sort of man who'd look at home on a football field, and a moment later Matt's gun is being kicked across the asphalt.

Stiles knows this isn't over for him, that he'll have to give statements and have a shock blanket draped over his back, those sorts of things—but he'd still rather be away from where there are people with guns, so he nods to Cop One to say _I'll just be inside, freaking out someplace where there aren't loaded weapons being tossed about_ and then bolts towards the side door, wrenching it open and ducking back into the crowd.

He feels lightheaded, overloaded with adrenaline, and even the thick, hot inside air feels sharp and thin on his shallow inhales. Derek and Scott's band has already finished playing, and all he wants to do is find them, either of them, so he can bury his face in Derek's chest and explain it all or grip Scott tightly by the arms as he tries to stave off a panic attack.

Derek's aware he's probably never going to locate Stiles in the crowd, but the message of that knowledge doesn't seem to have made it to his eyes, which continue scanning the sea of raised arms and faces and camera-phones and plastic beer cups. He'd have liked to look Stiles in the eye as he sang the lyrics he'd written, while the adrenaline that came with performing surged through his veins, empowered him. The final verse in particular, barely twenty minutes old, felt like the rawest music he'd made in a long while. Back when he was new to the band, putting in backing vocals behind Peter, Derek had screamed so hard he'd puked, pressed the worn-through pads of his fingers against his bass' strings during such constant, devoted practice that Laura had had to bandage his whole hand—partly just to make him stop and rest awhile. But the hush that seemed to fall over the whole room as Boyd and Erica fell away, leaving Scott's acoustic sound and Isaac's mellow keyboard had felt so unbearably private, the confessions spilling out of him in soft notes stripping him bare in a way that sent shivers down his spine.

The verse was only eight lines long, but Derek is fairly sure there's no way Stiles could have missed his meaning.

Now, he and representatives from the other bands stand on the stage, waiting. Derek hates being up here without a guitar or microphone to hold on to, hide behind. Even when he's shouting his secrets to the audience, it's easier; he's almost someone else when he's playing, transported by the music, shifted into a creature with the power to let loose. Standing here as the verdict is read out, he's only Derek, only human, feeling defenceless despite the tall, barbed gates sliding back into place between himself and the world.

"...in third place," a guy with a buzz cut and sleeves of bright tattoos announces, "The Alphas!"

The crowd claps and whoops as the blind pianist shuffles forward and is met by the presenter who shakes his hand and gives him an envelope, most likely filled with gift cards to various shops around the town.

"In second place..." Derek feels the sweat that's soaked through the back of his singlet drying cold against his skin. He wipes his palms against his jeans. "...The Silver Arrows!"

Allison Argent walks across the stage, beams at the crowd and waves at them as they cheer and squeal for her. As she passes Derek, she murmurs,

"You've got this."

If Derek doubted the promise she'd made that day Stiles had set them up at Pat's, he doesn't any longer, not watching her cast around a smile that's all happiness and gratitude and no bitterness whatsoever.

As for whether or not he, Scott, Erica, Boyd and Isaac have in fact _got this_, Derek wants to hope but knows he shouldn't let himself. They played the show of their lives, he can vouch for that, but in the end who wins the Hunt tonight doesn't come down to what Derek thinks. It's his first year as the leader, the relative veteran, and he's still learning on his feet, still trying to get it right.

"And so, folks, the moment of truth—the best catch of this year's Hunt is..." announcer-man pauses dramatically for long enough that Derek muses idly that he should host the elimination section of some reality show— "..._Derek and the Werewolves!_"

Allison's beside him, punching his arm excitedly, and the noise from the crowd is suddenly deafening and distant all at once. At moments like these, the difference between imagining your name being said and actually hearing it is immense, and Derek has to make a quick checklist of his working limbs before attempting to use them to cross the stage.

"Congratulations," the guy offers as he passes him the first place envelope. "You killed it out there, dude."

"Thanks," Derek says, a little numbly, and he can't help the smile that's seizing control of his facial muscles.

The rest of the band are running out onto the stage to join him, waving and celebrating, and they all gather together while the applause continue. It's all but perfect—there's only one thing missing.

Once they're back in the wings, Erica and Boyd slink off for a victory makeout session, and Derek, Scott and Isaac head down towards the crowd. Scott's looking for whichever of his friends he can find, Allison Argent in particular, and Derek's looking for... there's no point pretending he doesn't know exactly who he's looking for.

It's barely a minute before he spots Stiles, hanging at the edge of the room, looking around like he's searching for someone as well. Derek's heart skips a little when Stiles finds him and seems to light up a little. He looks tired, but he heads quickly for Derek—it's an awkward loping pace, like he's either trying to slow himself down, or trying to move faster than his limbs will let him, Derek isn't sure which.

"Derek," he calls, sounding breathless.

"We won," Derek breathes, because the words have been ricocheting around in his skull but it's the first time he's actually said them aloud.

"You won," Stiles pants. "Awesome." He's right in front of him now, right up close, but he doesn't stop coming, just pushes himself right up against Derek. Derek wraps an arm around him and the excitement of making music, the excitement of winning, the excitement flaring at every point at which Stiles is touching him all combine, reacting explosively. It's like goddamn fireworks, and Derek's so high on it that he can't even bring himself to hate that cliché.

He leans down and captures Stiles' lips with his own.

Stiles freezes. He's flattened right up against Derek's body, pulled close by strong arms, face so close that he's sharing the same heated air, so close that there's no air left between them at all—

Derek is kissing Stiles, hot and wet and firm, the textures of slippery lips and rough tongue and rougher stubble all overwhelming any lingering trace of control Stiles has. He sags in Derek's arms, but Derek holds him up, doesn't even seem to notice he's now taking Stiles' whole weight. It should be fantastic; god knows Stiles has thought about kissing Derek, imagined it without ever letting himself actually _hope_, because really, he's _him _and Derek's _Derek_. It _would_ be fantastic—but it's too big, too heavy, too much to come to grips with right now, in this too-fast progression from normality to crime thriller to, apparently, some sort of romantic comedy.

Right now he just needs the next breath: there's not enough air in his lungs, not enough space in his throat, not enough strength to drag the breaths past the tightness in his chest, and he just can't—just needs to—

Instinct kicks in, possesses his arms and has them shoving desperately at Derek, pushing him away until he finally, bewilderedly, lets go; possesses his legs and has them rushing him backwards, the bare minimum of support underneath him. He makes it over to the wall, pushes up against it like he can push more air into his burning lungs that way, grips it like it's a life raft at sea, because he really might as well be underwater, for all the drowning he's doing.

The whole night feels like a distant memory before it's even over. Stiles had spoken with various policemen, first aid, people he recognised, people he didn't; had been offered more water bottles than he could have counted even if he'd tried. He remembers Scott's face floating around amongst it all, Scott sitting beside him, not speaking, not having to. There are flashes of Derek's face, too, looking confused, concerned, angry, sad—almost the full range of Derek's most well-worn emotions. Stiles feels bad about that; tonight was supposed to be Derek's moment. He'd been elated when Stiles had run up to him in the hall, but Stiles had single-handedly wiped that all away.

Now, he lies awake and stares at the ceiling until a sleepy Scott crosses the room and clambers into bed beside him. It's something they've done before, but not in years. Not since Stiles' mom, Scott's dad. They definitely don't both fit in a single bed anymore, but Stiles still feels more secure wedged up against the wall with one of Scott's arms thrown across his chest like a seatbelt while the other drapes off the bed. Neither of them say a word.

He doesn't hear from Derek for two full days.

On the third day, he receives:

_I'm sorry_.

Derek stays in bed for three days. On the first, Erica opens the door at two in the afternoon, chuckles to herself and lets him be, probably assuming he'd had too many celebratory drinks the night before. On the second day, she comes in with three cups of instant noodles and refuses to leave until he's emptied them all down his throat. She throws him a questioning glance but doesn't ask.

On the third day, she does ask.

"What's going on, Derek? You're not just tired or hungover and you don't have the flu, so don't even bother trying to lie to me." She surveys him for another minute. "It's something to do with Stiles, right?"

Derek offers up a grumbling noise for her to interpret as she will.

"So, you kissed him. I heard. He was too busy freaking out about almost being _shot_ to process it properly. Nowhere there do I see a reason to sulk in bed for three days—"

"Not sulking," Derek butts in. Sulkily.

Erica just snorts like he's a complete idiot. Which he is, but not for the reason she's thinking of.

"If anything," she continues, "I see a huge goddamn reason to get out of bed and participate in some _communication_."

"I messed it all up, Erica."

"I don't believe that for a second."

"I kissed Stiles."

"I _know _that. But I don't see why it's a problem!"

Derek tries to pull the blankets down further over his head, but Erica tugs them back before he can complete his cocoon of shame.

"It's a _problem _because he clearly _didn't_ _want me to_," he hisses. God, the first time he'd _met_ Stiles he'd _stopped _someone from doing what he'd now gone and done himself.

"I reject that assumption," Erica says easily. She's _enjoying_ this.

"You don't know anything."

Erica plants herself on the edge of Derek's bed, close enough to lean over and trap him, making herself unavoidable.

"I know enough," she says, more sympathetically. "More than you do, even. I know that he'd blown the cap off his mobile phone plan two weeks into last month but kept texting you non-stop anyway. I know he laughs at your tiny, dry spurts of humour like you're the funniest asshole in the world, which, believe me, is a sign. I know he said no to a date with that Ethan guy from the Alphas—and the dude's hot, okay? Scott said that a few months ago there's no way in hell he'd have turned him down. What I'm saying is, you're the only one who _can't _see that you're both equally idiotic over each other. You don't have the whole picture, and you're distorting everything you _do _see with the sheer force of this self-loathing thing you've got going on."

Derek tests various arrangements of words to the effect of _I have reasons for self-loathing _and concludes that none of them will earn him anything other than a slap from Erica. He keeps his mouth shut; she'll take his silence as an acknowledgement of guilt, but at least this way she won't have words of his own to twist up and shove back in his face.

"Just talk to him, okay?" she says.

Derek does talk to Stiles, sort of. He gives in and sends him a text message, tosses up potential wordings for so long he stops being able to pretend it isn't pathetic. He wonders when exactly Stiles became so necessary to him—it wasn't that long ago that Derek wouldn't have known Stiles from Adam, wouldn't have felt somewhat bereft whenever he heard his phone chime and found it was a message from someone else. Wouldn't have wondered every time he did something what Stiles would think of it, whether it would make Stiles happy.

Derek's become really fucking good at ripping his own heart out. He _has_ noticed that.

_I'm sorry_, he sends, finally, because he _is_ sorry. Sorry for taking a kiss from Stiles when he evidently wasn't okay with giving it; sorry for ignoring him since then; sorry for being simultaneously too attached and too unavailable—and really sorry for himself, too, so much so that the feeling is almost violent. Stiles can take the two words whichever way he likes.

So, Derek's sorry for kissing him. It's not like it's the first time someone attractive has regretted Stiles, although in the usual scenarios there's more alcohol involved, and a fair bit of awkward morning-after detective work required to piece together exactly what went down in the first place. So, what, Derek was high on the adrenaline of performing and winning and Stiles was just conveniently _there_? And now Derek is clearly so hideously embarrassed about having kissed Stiles Stilinski that he's fallen off the face of the earth for the three days when Stiles has needed him most. Well, they were bound to reach this point eventually, this point where Derek realises that Stiles is, well, _Stiles_, and that Derek is a super handsome rock-superstar-in-the-making. This isn't exactly how Stiles had expected it to happen, but the awkward result appears to be the same.

Stiles hates the way he checks his phone obsessively just in case Derek decides to send a few more words, somethingelse for him to hang on to before Derek inevitably steps out of his life for good_. Damn it Stilinski,_ he thinks, _you should have known better than to get too attached_. Getting attached, though, is kind of what Stiles does best. The people he cares about, he cares about to human-shield levels. It ought to make him much more cautious about who he lets himself love.

And there, that is not the word he wants to be thinking right now at _all._

_I'm sorry too_, he texts Derek back. He's sorry that this had to end. He knows he should be sorry it ever started, too, sorry he allowed it to slide hooks in under his skin that it's going to kill him to pull back out, but he's not sure how to be. Surely a little piece of Derek for a little while is better than no Derek at all.

Lydia comes around and asks him to start covering his own shift at Pat's again. She doesn't demand it, the way she normally would; she asks him with guilty eyes and apologies and talk of how Aiden's a dick for abandoning Stiles and she won't be going out with him again. That Lydia would dump someone with abs like Aiden's for Stiles' sake is immensely flattering, at least. He agrees to come back the next day, not all that begrudgingly. He's had his time alone, inside, and while he totally needed it, any more will be an overdose and drive him insane.

Getting back to work and catching up on readings, it's business as usual, only it's not. Everyone around him keeps acting like nothing's happened—because to them, nothing _has_—but Stiles can't snap back to how things were before, when he had one less mountain of crap to climb over in the fight to get out of bed in the morning. It reminds him of when his mom was first diagnosed, the sudden change that new knowledge had wrought in his everyday world—and, of course, stirring up those memories doesn't help at all.

Stiles tries to convince himself that he's only checking his phone at casual, random intervals, tries to pretend it doesn't matter whether or not he hears from Derek, but at usual he sees through most of his own bullshit.

"You could always text first, you know," says Lydia as she cuts a slice of chocolate mud cake for a customer while Stiles sees to the girl's coffee order.

"And sound even more desperate and pathetic than Derek already knows I am?" he asks. "Nope. I think the resounding silence—broken only by an apology for kissing me at all, I might add—has made it clear enough that he doesn't want to kiss me again. Or see me. Or talk to me."

"If you really think that then you're kidding yourself," Lydia chides.

"Uh, no, I'm really not that good at lying to myself."

"And yet there you go again."

"Derek's being a big emo dickhead," Scott complains the second he walks through their door. "He told me today that my lyrics were insipid and childish. I put my heart into that song, man! It was about A—"

"Allison?" Stiles guesses.

"Yeah! He actually yelled at me. At Isaac too. Isaac actually looked like he was about to cry, it was horrible!"

"Didn't you guys just have a big win, though? Why would Derek be angry?"

"That's what I'd have thought," Scott agrees. "Which leads me to my question. What did you _do_ to him, Stiles?"

"What did _I _do to _him_?" he says, in a voice that isn't entirely quiet. "I didn't do anything. I just sort of went to him for a hug; the whole Matt thing had just happened and I saw him there and I was panicking so I just kind of latched on to him. But then there was kissing—which, by the way, not even initiated by me!—and now Derek's mortified and ashamed and likely never to speak to me again."

"You kissed Derek?" Scott's face scrunches incredulously. "But _why_?"

"Did you even listen to me just now? He was the one who initiated the kissing! But also, why would I _not _want to kiss Derek?"

"Because he's..." Scott frowns, looks as though the search for whichever word he's after is really straining him. "...he's just weird."

Stiles shrugs. "Yeah, in his own ways, I guess. But really Scott, if we're busy judging people for associating with weirdos you should take a long hard look in the mirror, bud, because I, your best friend and roommate, have been called a lot of things in my time but I don't ever remember _normal _or _sane _being among of them."

Scott pauses, seems to weigh the argument up for a second. "That's fair I guess," he admits. "Want to play some Halo?"

Sometimes Scott really is the best.

Lydia, on the other hand, is always, always the worst.

"Just come to the party, Stiles," she badgers for the entire six hours of their shift together. "You need to have some fun."

The party's at Ethan and Aiden's, and while Lydia insists he won't even have to see Aiden, Stiles isn't convinced. That time Matt offered Aiden drugs at a party? Turns out the answer hadn't exactly been no.

"Can't I have fun at home, alone, with my laptop?" Stiles whines.

Lydia just rolls her eyes. "Look, either you can come out and do the things you'd normally do, or I can give Sherriff Stilinski a call and let him know that you've been traumatised and I'm worried about you, and he should drive down here as soon as possible."

Stiles gapes at her. "_You wouldn't_."

_Try me_, says the tilt of Lydia's left eyebrow.

"Grab my acoustic, would you?" Erica shouts from upstairs, where she's busy readying her hair for the night out.

"No," says Derek. It's bad enough that he'd lost the fight against being dragged to some party that the Alphas' guitarists are hosting. He doesn't want, on top of that, to be the guy who brings a guitar. Derek hates that guy.

"_Yes_," comes Erica's voice again. "Either you can put my guitar in the car now and we can both be happy, or I can do it myself when it's time to leave and be annoyed with you all night," she sing-songs.

Derek grudgingly takes the acoustic out to Erica's car and manhandles it into the back seat.

"It's done," he informs her.

"Thanks Der!"

"I still don't see why I have to come to this stupid party."

Erica's head pops out over the banister at the top of the staircase. "Because free booze, that's why. The twins are like, ridiculously rich. From what I've heard their house is huge and their parties are even bigger. And there's nothing like free spirits to set the spirit free, Derek."

With Erica firmly latched on to one side of him and Boyd looming on the other, Derek feels like he's a convict being escorted into a prison. He wants to go home.

"I want to go home," he tells Erica, who ignores him.

The house is something to behold. Not just a house, but something nearing a mansion, it's not the sort of thing a pair of college boys should own all by themselves. The party is raucous, a mixed playlist of dance music and rock blasting through the sound system, the bench tops and bins already crowding with beer bottles and red solo cups. Derek is in the process of scouting out a quiet corner to lurk in for the duration of the night when he, Erica and Boyd run into Lydia and Stiles. Erica tightens her grip on his arm before he can try and slip away.

There's a moment of awkward silence, then Stiles and Lydia exchange a meaningful look of some description, and Stiles speaks up. "Uh, hi there. Lydia, this is Erica and Boyd. You already know Derek."

"Lydia," Erica smiles widely, "_so_ nice to finally meet you."

Derek's seen and heard enough about Lydia to know that whatever alliance is currently being formed will one day bring civilisations to ruin.

"Likewise," says Lydia cheerfully. "Now, you promised you'd introduce me to the guy who was TA for your undergrad physics class, and I expect you to follow through."

"Of course," Erica acquiesces, dropping Derek's arm and moving to take Lydia's.

Stiles' expression is one of abject horror, and Derek's pretty sure his isn't much different, because Lydia and Erica are _already acquainted_, already plotting evil things together.

"Must have stolen each other's numbers from our phones," Stiles groans, more to himself than to Derek. Boyd's drifted away into the crowd, so it's just the two of them left now. Which was obviously the girls' plan.

He should say something. He should, he should think of some words and _say them_—

"So, that was terrifying," Stiles beats him to it.

"Erica and Lydia teaming up is how the world will end," Derek agrees.

Stiles laughs, but it sounds hollow. There's a nearly-empty bottle of beer in his hand, and he takes a swig, downing the last of it.

"How are you doing?" Derek asks. It's been burning at him since the night of the Hunt, but he hasn't known how to ask, hasn't known if he should. Now, with all the awkward gaps congealing in their conversation, he realises that any words are better than none.

"You're an ass, you know that," Stiles says, and when he meets Derek's eyes there's something there that reminds Derek of a wounded animal. Anger, fear, hurt.

Derek nods. "I know, I'm sorry. I should go."

"What?" Stiles sounds even angrier now. "You're _sorry _that you kissed me and then didn't say a word to me when I reallyneeded someone, but you're still just going to walk away right now and keep ignoring me? I don't expect you to want me back, Derek, I never did—but I _did_ think we were decent enough friends to get past something like this. My mistake."

"I thought you'd want to be left alone," Derek says, because that's what he'd told himself over and over, every time he was tempted to reach for his phone.

"Not by you!" Stiles bellows. The music and chatter is loud, but people are still turning to look. His face reddens. "I'm going to get another beer."

Derek just stands there stunned, tries to process all the things he's just heard because none of them match up with what he'd thought was going on in a way that makes any sense at all. Unless—unless Stiles actually _had _wanted Derek to kiss him, albeit under difference circumstances. Was that a possibility?

Stiles is walking away from him, looking for a new drink, so Derek pushes through the crowd after him. He manages to get a hold of Stiles' hand.

"What do you _want _Derek?" Stiles rounds on him.

"Whatever you'll give me," Derek's mouth answers for him, too honestly. He could break this into even smaller, rougher pieces if he says the wrong thing this time, but judging by the look on Stiles face, like Derek is hurting him just by being here, Derek doesn't think there's anything more to lose. "I—Stiles, I want as much of you as I can have. When I kissed you and you pulled away, I thought you didn't want it. I thought I'd forced you." Those words sound even worse out loud that they have ricocheting around in his head. They come out heavily, shamefully.

"You..." Stiles has stopped moving away from him now, stopped moving altogether. He's standing still and silent as a statue, which is odd enough amongst the moving bodies all around them, but is downright unnatural since this is _Stiles_. "You thought I didn't want to kiss you?" Stiles asks, not sounding like he believes the words as he repeats them. "Derek, I pushed away from you because I was having a_ panic attack, _because I'd just been_ held at gunpoint _by the creepiest person I've ever met. Not because you scared me off by kissing me, you idiot." Stiles pauses, frowns. "So does this mean you _weren't _freaking out because you kissed some weedy, hyperactive first-year and you wished you could take it all back?"

Derek has been so, so incredibly stupid. Apparently, they both have.

He hates it when Erica's right.

"Yes," he says, "I thought how I felt would have been obvious after you heard the song I wrote—"

"I missed your whole set!" Stiles interrupts. "I was outside with—you know—the whole time."

"So you still haven't heard the song at all?"

"Nope."

Derek remembers the guitar stashed in Erica's car and is, for once, actually grateful for her scheming.

"Come with me and I'll play it for you," he says.

Stiles follows Derek out into the night air. It's cool and light after the stifling atmosphere of the party, and Stiles feels both relieved and nervous now. There are people out on the front lawn, mostly couples making out and drunk people laughing up at the sky, but as they head further down the street Stiles is conscious that he's alone with Derek. It feels more different that it should, now that they're definitely not chilling behind those lines that indicate just-friendship. It feels tense, like he can feel every inch of distance between them more keenly than ever. His heart is racing, thumping so hard that he thinks it may even be loud enough for Derek to hear. He doesn't care if it is.

Derek stops beside a small white car, pulls out a set of keys and unlocks it, opens the door to the back seat and gets a large black case out.

"Are we doing this right here?" Stiles asks. They're far enough from the party that the music and shouts are muted, like noises from above when you're underwater.

"Unless you'd rather go somewhere else," Derek says, but he's already unzipping the guitar case.

"Okay, here's fine," Stiles sits down opposite Derek on the footpath.

The first chords are minor, choppy and hard in a way that leads Stiles to imagine them being played in a gritty electric tone.

The first words send an irrepressible shudder through him. Derek's voice is husky and low. _I won't be unhappier than you are_, he sings, and Stiles knows automatically who he's singing about. The first verse is beautifully raw and painful, and the fact that Stiles knows the story behind it, knows what happened to Derek, only makes it worse.

In the second verse, Derek begins to rein in some of the wild grief and channel it into more logical anger. The lyrics are a story of figuring out where to lay blame, figuring out how to continue in a way that a loved one—Laura, Stiles knows—would wish him to. It reminds him of the many years he spent coming to terms with the fact that his mother wouldn't want him to dwell upon her death for the rest of his life. It had felt like such a betrayal, letting new things and people in to fill his time, visiting her grave every week instead of every day, then every fortnight, every month. These wounds were all so much fresher for Derek, and as he listened Stiles could feel them like physical pain.

The last verse is something different altogether. It's not addressed to Kate or to Laura, like the others had been. The strumming grows gentler, major chords sneaking in amongst the minor ones, and Derek's voice sounds... _hopeful_. God, it makes him ache after all the sadness that's been pouring out up until this point. The words are about someone else, someone new; someone who's like a light and an anchor and a life jacket and a map all at the same time. Someone who's taken over Kate's place and more.

It all sounds like too much importance, too much trust to put in any real person, and yet it seems like this last verse is not only addressed to a real person but it's addressed to... Stiles would be questioning it with every thought and breath he has if it weren't for the way Derek's _looking_ at him, his eyes never moving from Stiles' until after the song's ended.

"I don't know what to say to that," Stiles whispers. It's clear he needs to think of something though, because Derek is sitting there, having laid himself bare, looking for all the world like he's waiting for the firing squad.

Words, Stiles is totally supposed to be able to do—and yet, when they're at their most necessary, they've all gone and abandoned him.

He reaches out to grip the neck of Derek's guitar, lifts the instrument carefully out of his lap and lays it back in its case. Then he takes Derek's face in his hands, feeling the rub of stubble under his palms, and zeroes in on Derek's lips.

It's perfect this time, because Stiles isn't freaking out—not any more than any reasonable person would be when faced with the reality of kissing Derek Hale, anyway. It's a little frantic, Derek pulling him in like he's still trying to apologise for everything, like he doesn't realise Stiles has already put all the misunderstandings out of his mind. Stiles is at least half responsible for the frenzied touching too, though, encouraged by the satisfied hums and moans he earns when he tugs at Derek's bottom lip with his teeth, or when he straddles his lap and wraps his arms around his waist to press them closer together.

A car drives past and beeps loudly, and a little bit of the gravity dissipates. Stiles jumps back in surprise, laughing, and Derek smiles, wide and happy and real. It's an unbelievably good look on him, and Stiles is immeasurably proud to have helped put it there.

"Let's get out of here," Stiles suggests. "This party isn't really my thing."

Derek just nods like he's been waiting all his life for that cue and starts packing his guitar back into whoever's car the little white one is. Erica's, maybe?

"You want to go back to my place?" Derek asks, and he's asked this question plenty of times before when they were hanging out, but never in quite so rough and scratchy a voice, never with a mouth that's swollen and red from kissing Stiles. "We could line up a bunch of Bond movies and make out on the couch?"

Stiles is so veryamenable to that idea. "I think you may be my soul mate," he says by way of an answer. It's meant to be a joke—things like this usually are when he says them. Maybe it's a slip caused by the alcohol and overall excitement, but it doesn't come out sounding entirely light-hearted.

The chuckle Derek elicits in response sounds to Stiles as though he heard that the same way—like he knows he wasn't serious but sort of accidentally discovered along the way that maybe it was a bit closer to home, closer to the straight-faced truth than initially thought. And like he gets it, too.

Derek moves to get into the car, looks over his shoulder at Stiles as he goes. He says, "if you get a move on we can get burgers from the drive-thru on the way home."

Stiles nearly trips over himself in his eagerness, but a strong hand closes around his wrist and pulls him up until he's righted himself.

"I'm fine," he stammers up at Derek, whose expression looks half concerned and half amused and entirely content.

And Stiles_ is_ fine—he's really, really fine—finer than he even knew it was possible to be.

EPILOGUE

"I'm in New York," Lydia informs Stiles the moment he answers his phone. "We're having drinks tonight."

"Sorry, Lyds, but—" Stiles loves Lydia and her surprise visits, but tonight he's arranged himself a night off for the express purpose of attending the New York stop of Derek and the Werewolves' latest world tour.

"I know about the show, you idiot," Lydia blazes on, "I won't get between you and Derek's tight, tight jeans, don't worry. I just have some news to share, so make sure they know to let me into the VIP box."

"I'll be sure to."

"Great. Now, I can see my bag coming through, I'll talk to you tonight!"

"So, why _are_ you here?" Stiles asks Lydia as they sit in the green room after the concert. "I thought you were terribly busy with your research."

She huffs in response. "I am. But sometimes what my research requires is a night out."

"A night out _halfway across America_," Stiles points out.

"My research has a generous benefactor."

What Lydia means is that Bryan still hasn't revoked her access to his credit cards. Luckily for Bryan, brain surgery pays well—especially when you're _the _most accomplished neurosurgeon under fifty in the country. Stiles is also sure it doesn't hurt to be a really nice dude, which he knows Bryan is. Lydia's taste in men really has improved exponentially since high school.

Lydia and Bryan have been together for two years, officially, but everyone knows it's more like three. They first met when Lydia, newly awarded Fields medallist, was giving a lecture on her latest paper. Stiles had been there, because he's an awesome friend and friends support each other, and also because she'd shown up at his firm and literally hauled him away. He didn't have a clue what she was talking about so he mostly spent the duration of the lecture answering emails and reading briefs on his tablet. When she'd finished speaking and asked if anyone had questions, the look on her face told him that the level of understanding amongst the rest of the audience was somewhat of a disappointment too.

That was until a man named Bryan Somerville raised a hand. What he said was just as incomprehensible to Stiles as the whole rest of the affair, but Lydia's mask of mild disdain slipped noticeably as he said it.

"That's a very insightful way of looking at it. I'm afraid I don't have enough time remaining to discuss that subject in sufficient depth, but if you would please find me afterwards, I'd be more than happy to answer you in detail."

Lydia ditched her dinner plans with Stiles and went to meet Bryan instead. (Stiles hadn't minded too much; Derek had only been back in town a week after a tour at that time, and they still had plenty of phone-sex-inspired promises to see through.)

"He's not even a mathematician," Lydia had ranted to him the day after. "He's a brain surgeon. Math is his _hobby_. He's read almost all of my work. For _fun_, Stiles."

"So, did you sleep with him?" Stiles had asked the next logical question.

"No," said Lydia. "Nor will I—not until I can beat him at his own game."

The next month saw Lydia obsessively stockpiling and working her way through medical texts, attending seminars on neuroscience, calling Ethan to check facts.

It was obvious to everyone that Lydia Martin had finally met her match.

It still took eleven months for the two of them to get it together, though. Their first real date had, incidentally, been Derek and Stiles' wedding. The day had been as small an affair as Lydia and Erica had let them get away with, which meant a simple ceremony followed by a fancy dinner at a place the girls had picked out. They'd only invited the necessary people—Stiles' Dad and Scott's Mom, and Peter Hale who'd flown up from Sydney for the occasion; Lydia and Bryan of course; Erica, Boyd and their twin boys; Danny, Ethan and their brand new baby girl; a very round-bellied Allison and the even-dopier-than-usual Scott they'd all had to put up with for the past seven months; Isaac and his girlfriend Claire, a friend of Allison's and the sweetest, mildest girl Stiles had ever met. The two of them were all soft blonde hair and shy smiles. _Their babies will have wings and halos_, Lydia had declared the first time she saw them together.

And, most importantly, there had been Derek in his suit, standing up the front with him and smiling stupidly like Stiles was just the best thing in the world. Stiles will really never get over how lucky he is.

"You said you had news," prompts Stiles.

"I do," Lydia nods, sips her strawberry martini. "I'm just waiting for the right moment to share it."

"And when will the right moment be?"

"When everybody's here."

"Oh my god, are you dying?" Stiles pretends to ask, because he's certain that isn't it; Lydia has altogether too pleased an air about her today for it to be. Stiles has his suspicions, but he won't raise them and risk spoiling her moment.

"Of course not," she snaps. "Oh, look, here they all come."

Stiles swivels around, following her gaze to the far door where, sure enough, Isaac and Scott have appeared.

"Hey!" he shouts to his best friend. "You were on fire out there tonight."

"Thanks," Scott grins. "Did you like the new song?"

"Madeleine? Loved it, dude, your girl will grow up the coolest kid in school with a rockstar daddy writing such sweet songs about her."

"How about the _other _new song?" says a different voice, one that just whisks the world right out from around Stiles, as stupid as it sounds. It's different, hearing it through the phone or singing on a record, even shouting to the crowd during a show. He hasn't heard that voice in person in two months.

"I'd already heard that one," Stiles replies, standing and walking briskly (okay, sort of jogging, but he's allowed to be eager) over to where Derek's waiting for him. The others are all still there but he's lost track of what they're doing and saying, couldn't focus on them if he tried, because Derek's here, Derek's arms are around him, Derek's lips are crushing his. "You played it for me before you left, remember," he says into Derek's mouth, reluctant to pull away and leave any more than an inch between them. Derek's getting on another plane in the morning as the tour moves on, and Stiles will spend every available moment pressing skin to skin.

"Alright people!" Lydia's voice cuts through. Once all eyes are on her, she settles down. "First of all, it's lovely to see you all again. Secondly, I'd like to make an announcement." Lydia's hands are dipping into her designer handbag, which rests on the seat beside her. "You all remember Bryan, my amazing boyfriend,"—she gets a round of nods in response. Nobody could forget Bryan—"well," Lydia says, the word drawn out in suspense.

She holds up her left hand, where the most enormous diamond Stiles has ever seen hangs from her finger.

Allison squeals, clapping her hands and smiling so hard her dimples threaten to consume her cheeks. Erica jumps up and down, still high on the adrenaline of performing.

"Oh my god!" says Stiles, and he's not really that surprised, but suspicions are one thing and seeing the real, tangible, glittery engagement ring is another. "Congratulations!"

"Finally," he hears Derek say from just over his shoulder, his voice low but his smile evident in it.

The next half hour consists of Erica, Allison and Danny discussing wedding plans.

"Did you hear Matt Daehler was refused parole last week?" Isaac asks Stiles and Derek. Stiles had heard, but that doesn't mean he can't enjoy hearing it again.

Erica clearly overhears, because she shouts, "I'm buying everyone another round so we can all drink to that."

It's so nice to have everybody back together again.

Stiles and Derek are only slightly drunk by the time they make it back to their apartment. Stiles can see that Derek's exhausted, and he's had a long week himself, wrapping up a big dispute settlement just the day before.

"I'm going to make us coffee," Stiles says as he lets them in. "You go and shower off all that rock-concert sweat, okay?"

Derek goes.

He returns ten minutes later wearing a towel. Both of them know there's absolutely no use in him getting dressed again.

"What towel is that?" Stiles asks as he passes Derek his coffee, even though he knows which towel it is.

"Yours," answers Derek, hiding his smile behind his mug as he drinks.

"Well that just won't do," Stiles tuts. "I'll be having that back now, please," he holds out a hand.

Derek smirks because he's an asshole and he knows exactly what he does to Stiles, unwraps himself and drops the towel on the floor in front of Stiles.

Stiles steps right over it and the towel is well and truly forgotten.

They set the alarm for earlier than is strictly necessary, just to snatch a little bit of extra time together in the morning. It's five o'clock when the beeping rouses them, and Stiles has had so little sleep he's not even certain he closed his eyes at all, but he knows he has to suck it up. He can't waste this time.

Beside him, Derek seems to be going through a similar process of acceptance. He's even less of a morning person than Stiles. Stiles runs a hand over Derek's chest and that seems to help. Derek turns onto his side and nuzzles lazily at Stiles' hair.

"No flirting with groupies," Stiles yawns against Derek's neck.

"No flirting with your associates," Derek counters.

Stiles snorts. "I just have the one, Sarah, and she's your biggest fan. She only sucks up to me in the hope that I'll show her pictures of you at the beach."

Derek rumbles his approval. They've had this conversation enough times now that none of it really needs to be said, but they do it anyway whenever Derek's going away, a sort of parting ritual.

"I wish you didn't have to go at all," is always Stiles' next line.

"I wish I didn't, too," says Derek. "One more month and we'll be back in the studio, back at home."

"You'll be able to make me pancakes in the mornings again!"

"But you wake up at half past five," Derek groans.

"That's lawyering for you. You can go back to bed afterwards."

"Or you can just stay in bed with me."

Derek's phone rings and both of them sigh heavily.

"That's my cue," Derek eventually says, when a car horn sounds outside. He goes about putting his clothes back on and Stiles finds himself a shirt.

They walk down the stairs in silence, Stiles savouring every last scrap of this time he gets with Derek's presence warming everything around him.

"One more month," Derek says when they reach the street where the tour van is parked.

"One more month," echoes Stiles. "And then you're mine again."

Derek smiles softly, and Stiles already knows what's coming next, knows every word of this dialogue off by heart, not that it ever stops him wanting to hear it.

"I'm always yours," says Derek.

"Damn right, you are." Stiles leans in to give him one more kiss goodbye, just for now.

Stiles can hear someone making gagging noises out the van's window—most likely Scott, which is just ludicrous after all the Allison make-out sessions Stiles has had to witness over the years. That in mind, he makes sure to slip Derek a little extra tongue before letting him go.


End file.
